On Wednesday's Morning Joe, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went on to talk about working with Donald Trump and the future of the Democratic Party. Host Joe Scarborough brought up the question of abortion and other "social issues" that he said kept white working-class voters voting Republican in states like West Virginia, where they would gain more economic benefits if Democrats were in charge. He suggested that if Democrats want to win white working-class voters in states like Kentucky, they might need to run candidates who reflect the social values of those same white working-class voters — that is, opposing a woman's legal right to decide for herself whether to carry a pregnancy to term. Could Democrats, Scarborough asked Sanders, "be open to candidates that may not be rigidly pro-choice, may not be rigidly pro-gun control?" Sanders said yes.

A few days earlier, a column appeared in the New York Times encouraging Democrats to moderate their abortion stance. The writer, a male theology professor, implored Democrats to tamp down their opposition to the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal Medicaid funds for paying for most abortions — making the procedure harder to get for poor women — and treat abortion as "an issue of profound moral and religious concern."

Some men, it seems, think moving right on women's rights will allow the party to secure more votes and give it space to move left on economic issues.

This is a terrible strategy. It demonstrates the limits of "economic populism" when the term is defined by only men. And it's exactly why feminists have been so worried about the backlash against "identity politics" and the obsession from both the right and left with white working-class men. In the aftermath of Hillary Clinton's loss, a cottage industry of "I told you so" men has sprung up to lecture feminists and racial justice advocates on how identity isn't enough to win elections. Many of these same political analysts (and men who play political analysts on Twitter) have an outsize reverence for the white working-class man and seem to think that leftist economic policies will get these conservatives voters to change their long-standing right-wing politics — if Democrats just abandon the "identity politics" of pushing issues related to race and gender.

Of course, when "identity politics" are demonized in an effort to appeal to white men, it's women and minorities who lose out.

Abandoning full-throated support for abortion rights in an attempt to secure more votes from moderates is not a new idea. Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, political commentators — almost always white, almost always male — positioned abortion rights as a social issue fueling divisive culture wars. They painted abortion as an issue of life and religious morality, eclipsing women and relegating the moral value of allowing us sovereignty over our own insides to the background of the picture.

That changed during the Barack Obama years, thanks in large part to a resurgent feminist movement. Outspoken young women increasingly refused to see the issues that sculpt their lives and opportunities as marginal or up for debate; pro-choice groups grew bolder and began thinking of how to play offense instead of just fighting back against anti-abortion encroachments. The same bright young women who came of age reading feminist blogs went to work at advocacy organizations, on Capitol Hill, and for politicians, helping to shape policy and rhetoric from the inside — and sending a clear message that voters like them demanded unapologetic support of a full range of reproductive freedoms, from abortion rights to contraception access to paid parental leave, so everyone could have the option to have and raise healthy babies.

Hillary Clinton, who once touted "safe, legal and rare" as her view of abortion rights, not only advocated for legal abortion during her presidential run, but opposed the Hyde Amendment. Bernie Sanders said he supported abortion rights with virtually no restrictions.

And then Democrats lost.

Why and how Democrats lost remains up for debate — Clinton did secure some 3 million more votes than Trump, whose victory hinged on a relatively small number of votes cast in just the right places, making this a kind of unicorn election from which it would be foolish to draw broad conclusions about the electorate. Of course, that hasn't stopped anyone from drawing broad conclusions about the electorate. Chief among them is that Democrats need a populist economic message to appeal to the working-class white men (and white men generally) who flocked to Trump in record numbers. And that populism seems to require less emphasis on the Democratic base: voters of color and women (especially younger women).

It is wishful thinking that promises of a higher minimum wage, expanded workplace protections, paid leave and sick days, and more robust support for unions will make the white working-class vote overwhelmingly for Democrats — these issues were, after all, embraced by Hillary Clinton, and white working-class voters rejected her soundly (men more forcefully, but women too). "Economic anxiety" was such a common explanation for these voters' support of Trump that it's become a cliche, but one still embraced by many politicians and the talking-head class, despite the very obvious fact that the most economically anxious voters in the country — those making the least amount of money — cast their ballots for Clinton. And while the poorest voters supported Clinton, the starkest divides in voting patterns weren't along class lines, but lines of race, education, and gender.

In spite of this, even some on the self-proclaimed socialist left, like Sanders, now seem willing to sell out abortion rights in pursuit of the elusive vote of the working-class white man. There's no evidence that moving right on abortion will gain Democratic votes. But it's an appeal to the same dynamic Trump ran on: a bygone America, the symbol of which is the white factory man, able to support his children and a stay-at-home wife on the salary he earned doing good honest work with his hands.

Safe, legal abortion and modern, reliable contraception made it easier for women to pursue education and work; it let us delay childbearing and to choose our marital mates more carefully, and enabled us to leave bad relationships more easily or avoid them entirely; it let us compete with men. Which is a big part of why it's such a divisive and animating issue, both for the women who are thriving because of the freedom contraception and abortion offer, and for the traditionalists who think life was better when gender roles were clearer and women knew their place (and it wasn't in the corner office or on the factory floor).

Many of the white voters who support Trump do so him precisely because he suggests to them that he'll put white men back on top. If Democrats do the same, they'll only be able to peel off some of these voters — many are simply GOP loyalists who aren't going to be swayed — and they'll alienate their base, which remains a multiracial and disproportionately female coalition, while they sell their souls.

Tolerating Democratic hedging on abortion to justify appeals to the working class is also nonsensical. For women who are pregnant, abortion isn't a "social issue"; it's very much an economic one. Most women who have abortions say they chose that route either because of their economic realities or in planning for their economic futures: They can't afford a child (or, more often than not, they're already mothers who can't afford another child), or they see that their future plans would be irreparably derailed by having a baby just then. "You know what saved me from hereditary poverty?" wrote abortion rights activist Michelle Kinsey Bruns on Twitter, "Abortion. Abortion did. Real sorry if I'm caring about economic justice wrong."

She's not — and the Democratic Party should know better. There is little more fundamental to women's economic stability than the ability to plan, afford, and, if necessary, end pregnancies. Reproductive choice is as much a health issue as an economic one, something women understand intuitively. If Democrats are willing to compromise on that, they certainly can't call themselves the party of women's rights — and they won't be the party of economic justice either.

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Jill Filipovic senior political writer Jill Filipovic is a contributing writer for cosmopolitan.com.

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