'For a party that claims to champion choice, Democrats have been flexible with their core principles when it suits them'
Photo: Charles Krupa/AP On Friday evening, when the Democratic Party’s primary candidates convened for another interminable showdown. Once moderators got the usual questions about socialism and Medicare for All out of the way they decided, bravely, to breach new ground. They asked former vice president Joe Biden if he’d apply a basic litmus test to potential Supreme Court nominees, focused narrowly on their support for abortion rights.
Superficially, it shouldn’t be a surprise that politicians who belong to a party with legal abortion rights in its platform would make the issue a non-negotiable standard for whoever they nominate to the Supreme Court. Each candidate on stage is openly pro-choice. But that’s not a good reason to ignore abortion at the debates — and not just because the Supreme Court is dominated by pro-life conservatives. Biden’s rambling was enlightening, even if by accident.
In his answer, Biden, who once supported the Hyde Amendment’s ban on the use of public funds for abortion, tried to explain what exactly he meant when he’d criticized “litmus tests” in the past. The charge that left-wing candidates are overly prone either to litmus or purity tests is common among moderates, including Biden. Implied by this accusation is the belief that activists or politicians who insist on fealty to policies like Medicare for All will cost the party elections.
But the litmus test criticism has always been bizarre. Distilled, it’s an attack on conviction, which is a trait most politicians like to say they possess. The basic presence of a Democratic party platform suggests that it as an institution has agreed-upon litmus tests of its own. Abortion rights are in theory one of the party’s basic principles, a standard it will not compromise. Except that it does, with disastrous results.
The GOP doesn’t suffer from such confused messaging, and its base responds passionately to the party’s clarity. Democrats have sacrificed a similar advantage in service of a dubious electoral theory, which is that voters in certain areas simply won’t stomach pro-choice candidates. This is not universally true even in red-state districts and it is certainly not true in a general election, given that most Americans still support legal abortion in most or all cases.
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