As Donald Trump and his cast of flatterers continue their incompetent war on the American people, the Democrats seem more determined than ever to bungle their comeback from 2016’s humiliating defeat.

From small-thinking policy proposals (as outlined in Chuck Schumer’s New York Times editorial last week) and slogans that read like satire (“I mean, have you seen the other guys?”) to their quixotic obsession with wooing “moderate” Republicans and the rich to the detriment of progressives and the poor, their strategy is, at best, a wet fart. At worst, it’s a plan to sell out everything they once stood for.

The latest principle to be jettisoned like so much dead weight, or at least the latest one people are talking about: a woman’s right to choose.

In a recent interview with the Hill, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman, Ben Ray Luján, maintained there would be no “litmus test” on abortion for candidates as the party scrambled to to take back a majority in the House. “As we look at candidates across the country, you need to make sure you have candidates that fit the district, that can win in these districts across America,” he said.

From this, diligent followers of the discourse can deduce the DCCC will support anti-choice candidates if it thinks they can win, despite a paucity of evidence that Republicans in 2017 can be convinced to switch their votes to “D”.



This is hardly the first time Democrats have waffled on this issue. While Hillary Clinton stood firm on it during her 2016 election campaign, she said in an appearance on The View that “of course” you could be anti-choice and a feminist. The man she chose as her running mate, Tim Kaine, has a severely mixed record on abortion rights. The House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, said that “of course” candidates could be anti-choice and receive the support of the party (of course!), and that abortion was “kind of fading as an issue” for Democrats. And not because everyone who needs an abortion can now get one.

In an epic flip-flop, the Democratic National Committee chair, Tom Perez, said his party should be flexible in the name of the “big tent”, then turned around and said abortion rights were “not negotiable”. Then, in the midst of backlash from his own party, he had an aide release a statement saying he had not meant to create a “litmus test”. (Which makes me wonder if he knows “litmus test” is just a negative word for sticking to your principles on something?)

Perez then announced plans to meet with the anti-choice, junk-science-spreading group Democrats for Life, presumably to figure out how to woo pro-lifers’ support without upsetting his pro-choice base. (Spoiler alert: You can’t.)

Even Bernie Sanders, one of the most progressive elected Democrats in the country and usually no coward when it comes to ideological stances, has been guilty of ambiguity on abortion. When he and Perez drew fire for campaigning for Heath Mello, an Omaha mayoral candidate with a spotty record on choice, he had the chance to explain Mello’s stance had evolved and to draw the distinction between “personal views” and the desire to codify said views into law. Instead, he muddied the waters, saying that Democrats must support candidates like Mello in red states “if we’re going to become a 50-state party”.

This is especially puzzling, considering support for abortion rights is about as high as it’s ever been. According to a 2017 Pew Research poll, 57% of Americans believe it should be legal in “all or most cases”, as well as 75% of Democrats. If you break it down by age, support for abortion rights increases with each subsequent generation. Not to mention it’s an issue that unites the centrist wing of the party with the progressive or “Bernie” wing, a unity the party sorely needs.

In the 2016 postmortem, it seems Democrats came away believing “social issues” had been their downfall and they should stick to a narrow economic message. As if ignoring the needs of people who aren’t them is the key to winning back a relatively small number of white working-class swing voters they’ve assigned inordinate importance to, and as if issues like abortion don’t have profound economic implications.

What they fail to grasp is it wasn’t social issues or “identity politics” that many voters objected to, but the cynical way the party detached them from the many ways unfettered capitalism compounds the oppression of working-class people. What’s more, picking off Republicans is a failed strategy, but there’s reason to believe the 45% of Americans who don’t vote – a group that skews young, poor and non-white – will show up for Democrats if they offer them something to vote for.

As we’ve seen with the rise of leftwing leaders like Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, it is both morally correct and politically effective to insist that basic human rights – food, shelter, healthcare, education, bodily autonomy, using the bathroom – are not up for debate, and follow through with policy as needed. Contrast the technocratic tinkering of Schumer’s editorial with the inclusive, inspirational gauntlet-throwing of the Labour manifesto.

If this ostensibly progressive party wants to build that all-important “winning coalition”, they might consider standing for something, too. If that’s a purity test, call me Mother Theresa.