I'm convinced that abortion is the worst thing the Democratic party could have ever taken up. You simply cannot sway a vote of a person who believes you support murdering babies. (I am pro abortion, but a substantial amount of people think it is morally murder.) Those people have to vote R their whole life no matter what. Nothing is worse than murdering babies.
Democrats would probably never lose again if they publicly dropped support for abortion.
This has the same energy as "Democrats would fair better if they let slavery be legal again". Aren't democrats critisized by their actual voter base by trying to continually appeal to a party that will never vote for them? It really just shows that the major parties are either center right or far right.
Abortion is an emblematic example of how this kind of triangulation doesn't do what you're expecting. The Democratic party didn't take abortion up on the federal stage, repeatedly declining to create any new statutory protections and endorsing things like the Hyde amendment that acknowledge it's a contested issue. I think that was probably the right decision even in retrospect, but it didn't earn them even a modicum of goodwill from anti-abortion advocates.
You simply can't convince the public that your party doesn't stand for things your members care deeply about.
I mean, everyone knows that D widely supports abortion. It's been shouted from the rooftops for decades. It wouldn't be very believable in one cycle even if they tried, which they didn't; neglecting to bring up the topic is not close to publicly dropping support. Part of why it's so bad for them is because it will be very difficult to get disentangled from it.
From a pro-life perspective, "well they didn't make it easier to murder babies or bring it up much" is not compelling.
To me your phrase "publicly dropped support for abortion" sounds like "neglecting to bring up the topic". If you mean that Democratic leaders should somehow convince their members to support abortion restrictions that they oppose, I'm not sure why you would presume that's possible.
I'm imagining a candidate saying something like, "I want to help America with x y z [blue team related] issues. I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters. To that end, I vow to not support any measures for the expansion of abortion. I believe that right now it's more important to help Americans in other ways. This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z."
Maybe Democrats would never vote for this, but that's kind of the problem.
Again, Democratic politicians routinely made such statements in the era before Roe was overturned. The longstanding Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funds from being used in any way to expand, promote, or perform abortions. There was just no way to get around the fundamental problem that, to a critical mass of Republican voters, "I'd like to maintain the status quo so we can focus on other issues" was an unacceptable pro-abortion stance.
The official Democratic platform for every cycle from 1976 to 2000 (except 1984-88 when abortion was not mentioned at all) explicitly acknowledged that abortion was controversial, that abortion opponents were welcome in the party, and that decreasing the number of abortions that are necessary is a worthy goal. The issue got more polarized when it became clear that no compromise or detente less than overturning Roe v. Wade would ever be accepted. I don't know of any specific pledges not to expand abortion access, again because the Hyde amendment prevented any proposals to expand abortion access.
> This is a contentious issue, but if we can set it aside for the moment, I believe D and R can come together to solve x y and z
I'm curious: Where does your line of thought actually end? Do you agree that they should perhaps meet Republicans in the center around vaccine issues and dismantle vaccine requirements? What about issues of climate change? Corruption?
It ends when they can win powerful majorities in elections again. What I said is only controversial because the topic is relatively well supported. But if you look at it as a party supporting a topic that is preventing them from winning elections, it doesn't really matter what that topic is, they need to rethink their platform until they can win elections again.
It might sound unsavory to say that they should drop <issue you think is important>, like climate change, but if that were genuinely the reason they're losing then of course they should drop it. The alternative is you just have a party of ideologues with no power. They can still do good things without doing <important thing>.
I just don't think any issue is as contentious as abortion, or having as much of an effect, because you can hold your nose about a lot of things, but not about 'murdering babies'. Again, this is a moral hard line that a lot of people have. They seriously think that Democrats are ontologically evil because of this; it's far beyond the political. I don't think they need to drop those things you listed from the platform because I don't think it would help them win.
From talking with Republican or centrist or ex-democrat peers and family, some of them would vote Democrat "if they stop killing babies", and others would "if they stopped the racial shit". I've never heard anyone say such a thing about anything you listed.
i.e. Abortion is generally supported by 63% of the overall population, 85% of Democrats and 67% of moderate/liberal Republicans. I don't see how you'd ever convince Democrats to drop it to cater primarily to conservative republicans.
I asked you, specifically, where your line was at. If the dems were losing because they thought people getting shot in the street by government agents were bad, should they instead say 'actually, a little murder is alright'? What about gay marriage? First amendment rights?
The notion that they should compromise with people whose ideals align with literally killing people or taking away rights is a notion I reject. I will never, ever vote for a democrat that compromises in the way you suggest so they can choose which side they want to try and get votes from.
Well I typically vote Republican, so I can only speculate. But let's imagine that 70% of people support ICE, and those people would never ever vote against ICE, because they think that is evil; everything else is the same.
In such a world, the Dems have no power, because they get 30% of the vote at most. They should stop fighting ICE so that they can at least do something on their agenda. The choice is between passing some good legislation unrelated to ICE, or never being able to pass any legislation. Obviously the former is better.
At the end of the day it's a democracy. The people vote for what they want, and then get it. The people originate the ideas that are available to be implemented. The notion of a democratic representative refusing to do what is needed to get votes is meaningless. It's the notion of a political idea that is refusing to be believed in, so must become irrelevant.
Anyway, your whole train of thought presupposes correctness and righteousness and that change to certain things is not on the table. If somehow the Democrats shrunk to the size of the Libertarian party because they held onto all that, you could keep voting for them, but real politics continues without you. I am suggesting they change before that shrinkage occurs, not after or never.
But your whole train of thought presupposes that activism can't change people's support and votes. The hypothetical you're describing played out with gay marriage over the past few decades, and the folks on the 30% side of the issue won completely - gay marriage is now completely legal, supported by a majority in every state, and so well-established that opposing it would be electoral poison.
True and good point, however I do not believe that activism can change anyone's support for abortion, for reasons I've stated. That specifically is a special case. Maybe it can implant ideas into the youth so they don't need their minds changed, but that's a long game.
>I want to bridge the aisle with Republicans and voters.
Anyone saying this in 2026-2028 is going to be eviscerated by democrats. The bridge was long burned and now they are throwing citizens into the burning wreck. You don't "bridge the aisle" with people who threaten your life.
Also, anyone who wants to protect kids but isn't pushing the Epstein files to be released spoke wide and loud on what they really care about. So many motte and baileys out there.
So, we've seen large disproportionate electoral success from pro-life democrats? Referenda protecting abortion rights in red states were totally crushed?
Wait no. That's not what has happened.
Further, democratic voters are democrats because they support the policies that the democratic policy supports. Democrats suddenly being down with a federal ban on abortion isn't going to exactly get pro choice dems (the huge majority of their voting population) to run to the polls.
Dems tried the "actually we are right wing too" approach on immigration. Do people who hate illegal immigrants vote dem now? No.
Roe v. Wade isn't gone because of the will of the people. Nobody voted to overturn it. It's gone because of a unique scenario involving the balance of power in the SCOTUS.
Congressional Republicans simply refused to confirm a legally appointed justice, allowing a conservative justice to be appointed in their place after the next POTUS was elected. Then, another liberal justice passed away creating another vacancy which was again filled by a conservative. If either or both of those things hadn't happened, Roe v. Wade would not have been overturned.
And sure, you can say it was the will of the people that a conservative was in office at the time, and appointed the justices, but that's not the same as voting for or against federal abortion rights.
Appointing judges to overturn Roe v. Wade was a focal point in the 2016 election. Dangling that possibility was the entire point of the confirmation shenanigans.
That was the point. democrats often point out those rare cases where the womens life is in danger and then use that as the absolute we must allow all abotions. Nobody will argue for the compromise and so you lose a lot who won't acpept the absolute.
any bill to ban abortions (because "muh sacred life") should include funding for childcare, medical coverage, and school lunches. Pro-lifers are unfortunately only pro births when it comes to voting.
So many people didn't vote for the Democrats in 2024 because they didn't support Palestine and they lost as a result. If the Democrats become identical to the Republicans then why would any non-Republican even bother voting?
You are so correct in your first statement yet imply something in your second I think is so incorrect in a wider context that it strikes me like whiplash.
Paying lip service but not addressing that friction was a significant part of what killed the Harris campaign, IMO.
well yes. That's the big issue. Trump didn't get more votes, Harris got drastically less than Biden. People didn't come out.
She had a bad hand needing to start out 6 months into an election cycle, and she played it poorly to boot. That's why this "we need to appeal to moderates/right wing" narrative is so frustrating. That's exactly what Harris did by trying to downplay Palestine/defend Israel and refusing to talk about the tensions in the job market. She established herself as "more of the same". That doesn't win votes in increasingly bad times.
They were generally good at making sure whoever is "really running the country" stayed in the Lawful Evil alignment. If the trump regime was smarter we may have been truly cooked.
Instead we have cartoon supervillains trying to pick fights with our allies in the open, and police openly shooting citizens. Pretty hard to defend that.
Democrats would probably never lose again if they publicly dropped support for abortion.