I am reluctant to wade in here, but I've seen too much derision of those of us who are deeply disappointed with Obama of late, and it is time for the phrase "purity troll" to be retired. Some of this needs to be addressed for the attempt to stifle dissent that it represents. I for one will not be silenced for standing for the principles I believe to the best ones to base American government upon.
I will still vote for Obama, but I am clear that he is merely less bad than McCain.
I was going to offer his FISA non-stance and his embrace (longstanding) of religious institutions as part of federal programs, too, but it's already too long. The point is, I do not find his actions consistent with progressive principles more often than I am comfortable with.
First, most controversially, his comments about late term abortion offered in the Christian magazine "Relevant" as reported on Huffingtonpost. The quote that I find deeply troubling is the following:
OBAMA as quoted in Huffpost: prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain "a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother. . . . Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term."
Now the right to abortion is based on a moral principle and a legal principle, to my mind.
First, the moral principle is that a reproduction is a very intensely personal and complicated experience, especially for the pregnant woman. Removing control over her own reproduction from her can wreak great suffering and misery. As a progressive, I think that refraining from creating suffering and working to ameliorate it is the very foundation of every principle we espouse. It is an undeniably moral vision.
Second, Roe v. Wade (and Griswold) is grounded in a right to privacy that no one seems to quite be able to nail down in the constitution. (Note: a strict constructionist would have to believe that Americans have NO right to privacy since it isn't mentioned in the Bill of Rights. Why no one has beat up the Republicans for pusing a view that does not believe in privacy rights I have never understood, but that's for another diary.) The idea is that there are areas of private activity that the government has no right or authority to regulate. Several of the rights that are in the bill of rights are grounded in this, such as freedom of religion and to some degree the freedom from arbitrary arrest or searches, I would argue. The conceptual grounding of Roe as I read it is that reproduction is a private activity that the government cannot reach arbitrarily.
The problem I have with Obama's description
They are twofold: First, by drawing a sharp limitation on late-term abortions for only physical threats to health (which perhaps you can find a reading of his words that doesn't suggest that, but I don't see it) means that no matter how much suffering carrying the pregnancy to term inflicts, Obama would use the force of law to force the mother to carry the pregnancy to term. The archetypal scenario is that of pregnancy where fatal developmental disorders do not manifest themselves until the third trimester. Consider discovering that the fetus will be severely deformed and will die within hours of birth. As a parent I can tell you what misery this would already inflict, but then to have the state intrude to require you to carry the pregnancy to term and watch the child die represents a kind of cruelty and, to my mind, a certain moral depravity I can not respect at any level. I am chose these words carefully. I am one of those who will not cede the moral high ground to religious leaders, because I find their actions morally reprehensible all too often. This is one very clear example.
The second problem I have is less clear, since perhaps Obama merely choose his words poorly. By couching his proposed prohibition in terms of justifiction he seems to me to be framing abortion not as a right to a private into which the state may not intrude (the abortion rights position of Roe), but rather as a privilege granted by the state to women. If it is a right, the woman does not have to justify her exercise of it, the state would have to justify its infringement of it. Here, Obama does not say "the state could justify prohibiting late term abortions when there is no physicaly complication because of [insert compelling state interest here]" but rather adopts a language suggesting that it is the woman who has to justify her exercise of her right. That is not what Roe held. Now, if Obama weren't a Constitutional law scholar I wouldn't hold him as accountable to as high a standard, but these are conceptual distinctions he is absolutely keenly aware of.
That said, it may be that he mispoke or clarified later in the interview. It may be that this misrepresents what he thinks. Frankly, I'd advise him against clarifying, since as they say "the more you stir the sh*t, the more it smells" Politics isn't law.
UPDATE:
It occurs to me that perhaps the best thing we progressives can do to elect Obama is to heckle him from the left. Then he can run as a centrist by saying: "See? All those Kossaks are mad at me. I'm not that liberal." We purity trolls are doing a grand service. meh.