Now we're thinking!

It seems some Democrats have begun to take on the kind of re-thinking and real brainstorming that I was hoping would take place. Consider these two grafs from a story about liberal Christians in yesterday's Washington Post:

"One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion -- could there be a more moderate ground, where even if they retained their pro-choice stance, they talked about uniting pro-choice people together to actually do something about the abortion rate?" said Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal evangelical journal Sojourners.

If the Democratic Party were to "welcome pro-life Democrats, Catholics and evangelicals and have a serious conversation with them" about ways to reduce teenage pregnancy, facilitate adoptions and improve conditions for low-income women, it would "work wonders" among centrist evangelicals and Catholics, Wallis said.

See how simple that is? It's just a repackaging of the same old ideal, but done in a way that appears proactive and not morally tenuous. Not to mention, this would give Democrats a chance to really promote birth control -- something I think could be a smart moral issue, since the Bush administration has been so aggressive in pushing abstinence-only programs that ignore options such as condoms and birth control pills, and therefore put children at risk by not knowing all options available to them. In an argument between realistic safe sex and a dogmatic abstinence approach, I really don't see how the Democrats could lose. All they need to do is seize the debate, and frame it as the best method to combat teenage pregnancies. Who can argue with that?

Posted by Jason Feifer at November 11, 2004 12:01 AM