Yesterday, I wrote a
diary about how Democrats should use the fact that Harry Reid is both a pro-life Mormon and the leader of the Democrats to our political advantage, using it as an example of the Democrat's big tent compared to GOoP Leadership as an appeal to "values" voters. It turned out to be very timely, as the Moonie Times began a smear campaign on the Stormin' Mormon last night.
Because of the smear campaign, and the feedback I got in the comments, I wanted to present to the dKos community what conclusions and insight I reached for the ensuing discussing. I have come up with a couple of points Democrats can take away from the fact that our Senate Minority leader is a pro-life Mormon.
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The first comment I'd like to focus on is one by
DHinMI:
Unless we want the majority of Democrats to be anti-choice, I see no advantage of rhetorically dressing Reid up in a sandwich board that says "pro-life Mormon." It's a great counter-argument for the claim that the Democrats don't tolerate dissenting views, that we're 100% this or 100% that, but unless one opposes reproductive rights, I don't think highlighting that aspect of who Harry Reid is helps us all that much.
The emphasis is mine and hits the nail on the head. Harry Reid is living proof that GOoP characterization's of Democrats as rigid and non-accepting of religious folks (or "pro-life") is just nonsense. Whenever we are "engaging the righties", we need to remember this, and use it as our rhetorical tool. Some winger says "All you Democrats hate pro-life people," we can respond, "Then how do you explain the current leader of the Senate is pro-life?" We could then pivot on the fact that the GOoPs do not have diverse leadership when it comes to this issues, and
they are the party of intolerance.
In the first diary, I talked about Reid's 29% rating from NARAL, and how even that doesn't exclude him from party leadership. In the comments, a distinction was made on being "pragmatically pro-life" v. "dogmatically pro-life", and is the second point of interest to learn from Harry.
From a comment by Cynical Copper:
Hell, [Reid] was the one who put forward the Prevention First bill (always remember that!) so he knows that simple legislation won't stop what a hell of a lot of people see as a problem (abortion), but feels put off by it personally, so he put forth a bill to try to solve the problem proactively, along with some other related problems.
Again, this hits the nail on the head, and borrows from Big Dog's "Safe, Legal, and Rare" mantra. Too much of the political landscape has bought into the idea that being "pro-life" and "pro-choice" are mutually exclusive, but we know they are not. The real two sides of the abortion debate are "pro-choice" and "anti-choice", and we need to keep hammering away at this distinction (thanks to
bella for the reminder).
Everyone agrees that lots of abortions are a bad thing, but it matters how you deal with the problem. Here again, we can use Harry Reid as a living example of the Democratic stance on abortion: take pragmatic steps to help minimize the need. The flip-side of that coin would be the dogmatic approach of teaching abstinence, denying birth control, denying abortion access, and having your daughter come home and say, "I'm a virgin--I only have anal sex."
The final lesson we can learn from Harry is again from Cynical Copper:
The thing is that although [Reid] may call himself "Pro life"(trademarked by the other side), he knows how to keep it out of his politics.
Bingo--he has managed to keep it out of politics. I don't know how Harry was able to pull this off, but whatever he did, we should exemplify it. Perhaps all Democrats should now give themselves the title of "pro-life", and hijack the term from the theo-cons to expand the definition to beyond being "anti-choice". This will do nothing to win over the dogmatic abortionists, but could warm us to the moderates (and labeling the anti-choicers as the rigid dogmatists could have it's own advantages).
Conclusion
I close by repeating again a quote from Fineman's piece on Reid back in April:
Proudly unphilosophical, he thinks the Democratic Party needs no soul-searching. "I believe in simplicity," he says. "Health care, pensions, energy independence--that's my agenda."
Harry states clearly what it is to be a Democrat, and we should remember it. Regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender,
if you believe the role of government is to help working folks and check the power of the capitalists--you are a Democrat. Perhaps you have moral dilemmas with some of our planks, but that will never exclude you for the Democratic tent, just look at our leader, our Stormin' Mormon, Harry Reid.
Give 'em Hell, Harry!
and yes, this is cross-posted @ jScoop