Notes from Evil Bender

The Lizard Queen has a must-read post exploring Hillary Clinton’s “reassurance” about her pro-choice credentials, assurance that basically calls for appeasement of those who want to ban abortion. Check it out, already. I’ll wait.

Back? Cool. Says Clinton:

HC: I’ve been saying the same thing for as long as I can remember: I believe abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. I do think women should have a choice but also that women should be making responsible decisions. I think people who have been pro-choice have basically gotten lazy about it. There will be a concerted effort by the Supreme Court to try to push as far as they possibly can [last spring, the court upheld a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions], and if they go all the way and either repeal or overturn Roe v. Wade, then it will become a political issue again in the legislatures of every state, and people will find themselves having to be politically active. When you’re part of a group that cares deeply — as the anti-choice people do — you get organized, and you vote on that issue, whereas people who are pro-choice vote on a lot of different issues. I bet a lot of people among your readers voted for George W. Bush because they concluded that he was more likeable or whatever. But if [abortion rights] is the most important issue to any of your readers, then it has to become a voting issue.

LQ Correctly notes that

Second, as to the alleged laziness of pro-choicers: are you fucking kidding me?? It has to become a voting issue?? Senator Clinton, what exactly do you think women like me have been doing since we turned 18? Voting for the candidate most likely to give us a pony? Failing to get to the polls on election day because we were getting a manicure?

In Clinton’s defense, I’m only interested in pro-pony candidates.

In truth, I don’t understand what Clinton is trying to do here. Despite her faults, she’s always been savvy at delivering her message, and this is a jumbled mess. Why accuse your supporters of laziness? And how does saying “we might lose abortion rights” reassure them that you’re really with them on the fight? I see two possibilities–either Clinton really is backing off support of reproductive rights, or she’s really saying “responsible decisions means making concessions to those who don’t want women to have control over their own bodies.” I could charitably add a third possibility, that she’s arguing the left doesn’t fight hard enough, but if that’s the case, she’s a huge fucking hypocrite given her recent stance-softening.

So I don’t think this was an attempt to reassure–if anything, she was “reaching out” the other way, to people who aren’t staunch bodily rights defenders. What else is the “laziness” and “responsible” talk, and all the gibberish about “the most important issue” is basically signalling that she won’t fight hard for abortion rights until she’s sure it will win her the election.

Clinton just doesn’t get it: she’s realized the left are less single-issue than the far right (whose issue is whatever their leaders tell them it is), but she thinks that means her stances don’t mean as much. What she doesn’t get–and what might hurt her come primary season–is that we might not be about only one issue, but we’re not going to forget where you stand politically. As Clinton continually betrays her base’s values–on the war, on torture, on domestic wiretapping, on gay rights, on bodily right–in a desperate attempt to shed the “liberal” label, she signals to all of us “lazy” folks that she doesn’t really care about us. And we’re not the block that were suckered by Bush’s “kinda slow frat boy” routine, so her public persona and debating skills won’t save her once the left realizes what she’s really about.

If it came down to it, I would support Clinton over the current crop of Republican candidates, since, on balance, she’s less offensive than they are, but there’s no way in hell I’d support her in the primary.

I just hope the primary voters in the states that have some say (I’m not one of them) express their dissatisfaction with her pandering to the right. I strongly suspect they will.