March 16, 2005
ARE THE SECULAR SUPPOSED TO JUST GO ALONG?:
Who Gets It? Hillary (NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, 3/16/05, NY Times)
The first lesson Mrs. Clinton is demonstrating is the need to talk much more openly about God and prayer. That resonates in a country where a Pew poll found that 60 percent of Americans pray at least once a day."I've always been a praying person," Mrs. Clinton declared recently. Of course, this approach works in her case only because her religious faith is longstanding. It didn't work for Howard Dean when he described the Book of Job as his favorite book in the New Testament. With a candidate like him, you'd worry that more talk about religion would lead to comments about how much he treasures the Twelfth Commandment.
Democrats are usually more comfortable talking about sex than God. But that doesn't work in a country where 70 percent say that "presidents should have strong religious beliefs."
Then there's abortion. Mrs. Clinton took a hugely important step in January when she sought common ground and described abortion as a "sad, even tragic choice to many, many women."
The Democratic Party commits seppuku in the heartland by coming across as indifferent to people's doubts about abortions or even as pro-abortion. A Times poll in January found that 61 percent of Americans favor tighter restrictions on abortion, or even a ban, while only 36 percent agree with the Democratic Party position backing current abortion law.
The third of Americans who are pro-death are going to have a political party though. If it's not the Democrats it will be the Greens or some other third party. Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2005 7:56 AM
One of Bill Clinton's abilities was to be able to talk to differing groups of people and make both sides believe at least for a while that he was on their side. But he never tried to do that on something as devisive as the abortion issue. I doubt Hillary is going to go all the way on that either during the upcoming years, either, but her effort right now is to try and make pro-life voters believe she at least is sympathetic to their cause, while maintaining the idea among her core supporters that her sympathy won't translate into any actual measures or appointments once she gets into office.
Posted by: John at March 16, 2005 9:15 AM"The third of Americans who are pro-death"
Do you really think its anywhere near that high?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 16, 2005 10:02 AMI think OJ is referring to the 36% who support the current law mentioned in the article.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at March 16, 2005 10:17 AMI think OJ is referring to the 36% who support the current law mentioned in the article.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at March 16, 2005 10:18 AMExcuse my French, but this is complete, total b..balderdash. Are people who care about LEGALIZED ABORTION, so stupid as to care whether Hillary, or Bush or any politician merely is saddened by abortion? Don't they want politicians who will do something? Different judges or something.
Posted by: h-man at March 16, 2005 10:41 AMThe coming realignment could be very interesting. We all seem to be assuming that the Replicans will have the good sense not to temporize and God, Guns and Gays, and quotas and the War. We'll see. It still could look like "52-pick up," as when the little kid who lost the card game throws the cards against the ceiling and stalks out of the room.
Posted by: Lou Gots at March 16, 2005 10:47 AMBlair has hypotenuse fatigue.
Posted by: Luciferous at March 16, 2005 4:29 PMThat's a great line!
Posted by: jim hamlen at March 16, 2005 5:39 PMNaw. Too square.
Posted by: ghostcat at March 16, 2005 6:11 PM