Letters to the Editor

• AKA Smith

  [Read the article: The other 18 million]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Was that the article that said that it might actually be to the Democratic Party's advantage if Roe v. Wade was overturned? Was it a recent article or one that was published a few years back?

  If that's the article you're thinking of, I think the argument went like this:

  A majority of people support some degree of legal access to abortion, but because Roe v. Wade is in place, they are complacent about the right to reproductive choice.

  The anti-abortion minority, on the other hand, is highly energized. Republican politicians are able to court these highly-motivated foot soldiers with anti-abortion rhetoric without disturbing the mushy middle which is pro-choice but not passionately so.

  If Roe v. Wade was overturned, abortion rights would become the subject of local jurisdictions, so local politicians would have to answer directly to their constituents on their abortion positions. The pro-choice crowd would realize that they need to actively support abortion rights by voting for Democratic candidates, instead of passively relying on Roe v. Wade to protect them.

  The other thing about abortion is that in regions that are predominantly anti-choice, local politicians often try to block access to abortion through introducing obstacles like waiting periods and parental consent to make getting an abortion so onerous for poor women that it might as well be illegal for all the access they have to it. There was a good PBS documentary about this a couple years ago called "The Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi" which deal with the topic (I think it might have been Frontline). I remember an advocate from one of the major pro-choice groups said, "Sometimes I wish Roe v. Wade would be over-turned - at least then we could wage the fight in the open."

  By the way, another really good documentary on abortion was "Lake of Fire" - which came out last year. I highly recommend it.

  But of course the Supreme Court is important for a whole lot of other things than abortion. Anyone who is at all serious about separation of powers issues, for instance, should give thought to the disastrous consequences of McCain appointed Supreme Court justices.

  I don't think it should be necessary to "blackmail" women to vote for Obama because McCain is so bad on "women's issues." McCain is bad on "people issues," period. Why the rest of the human race should suffer through a McCain presidency because of media loudmouths like Olberman, Chris Matthews et al. is something I can't understand. If Obama had run a sexist campaign, I could understand punishing him for it on principle - but I see little evidence that Obama did so, even through surrogates. Honestly, there would be no benefit to Obama in running a sexist campaign - the sexists who opposed Hillary needed no active provocation to abuse Hillary because of her sex. And to participate himself would invite blow-back from a huge voting block within the Democratic party.

  As for the jerks who've been abusing Hillary with sexist rhetoric in venues like this letters page - voting in reaction to them puts the state of the nation in the hands of a bunch of idiots with internet access. Who knows who these people are - trolls masquerading as Obama supporters, fanatical Obama supporters blinded by passion into using any weapon at hand to attack the enemy, or simply people with borderline personality disorders? I mean, let's face it, if you have 18 million supporters and even 1% of them are mentally deranged, that means you have 180,000 lunatics who call themselves your supporters writing God knows what. Sure, you can point out to these people that it's counter-productive to say the things they say, but my experience is that people will say what they want to say, whatever their true motivation.

  Some of the comments from Obama supporters make me cringe as much as I'm sure Harriet Christian made you cringe. But I'm hoping that there is a silent majority of both Obama and Clinton supporters who can look past all the ugly noise of the past six months, and remember what binds them together as Democrats, as Americans, as human beings. We can't afford to listen to the crazies.

  "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,/.../If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,/Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,/Or being hated, don't give way to hating,/.../Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,/And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son [or a Woman, my daughter, as the case may be]!"--"If" by Rudyard Kipling

  Permalink Thursday, June 5, 2008 06:16 PM

• indigo218

  [Read the article: The other 18 million]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  The weird thing is that you're delusional enough to believe that if Hillary's supporters sabotage this election so that Obama loses, Hillary will inevitably be the Democratic nominee in four years.

  If Hillary's supporters throw this election, my advice would be for Hillary to run for the REPUBLICAN presidential nomination in 2012 instead. She would stand a better chance of winning.

  Permalink Thursday, June 5, 2008 06:54 PM