Peggy Noonan thinks she knows what's good for Democrats and that this Stupak-Pitts abortion amendment is somehow good for the party—but only in a “funny, little political way”. How quaint of you Peggy to be so completely dismissive of what the real life impact of that amendment passing would actually mean to the lives of women, especially those with low incomes that are the least capable of doing anything to fight back against what’s happening but most likely to be impacted by it.
Noonan had this bit of condescending wisdom to share with all of us on this weekend’s edition of The Chris Matthews Show.
Matthews: Peggy every four years the Democrats meet and write a platform and it says pro-choice, abortion rights, but you know a third of the Democratic people in this country, who vote Democrat are pro-life. Did they ever, ever have a plan here to bring them all together?—because that’s what they have to do.
Noonan: I don’t know if they had a plan but I’ll tell you in a purely political sense, for the Democratic Party to shake off for the first time in like 35 years the general understanding that they are the pro-choice and you cannot be pro-life and be in this party—it hurts the Democratic Party—everybody always said it hurt the Republicans to be pro-life. It hurt the Democrats to be rigidly pro-choice—to not let pro-life people speak at their conventions etc. In a funny, little political way this is a benefit to the Democratic Party that, that pro-life people have a serious place at the table at this moment. It’s good for them.
What’s pathetic is that religion is allowed to be used at all to get working people to vote against their own economic interests and that people don’t have the sense to see past that. And if Peggy Noonan thinks that it is acceptable to call any aspect of this debate “funny” or “little”, she needs to go read Digby’s post from last week-Goldilocks Was Betrayed:
In case you are wondering about the real life effects of playing cheap politics with pregnancy, read this. And this. Contra McGaskill and Tweety, who are misinformed about just about everything, this is actually a big deal. This amendment doesn't just punish Lord Saletan's little sluts. All women will be losing coverage for necessary abortions when a wanted pregnancy goes wrong. It only has an exemption for the life of the mother, but not for her her health, nor for severe and fatal fetal abnormalities. Click those links for what that means in real life.
