I find it telling that the platform eliminates the “safe, legal and rare” rhetoric. It still supports abortion in all circumstances and for any reason, and supports taxpayer funding for abortion. I fail to see how this platform makes any progress toward appealing to pro-life voters. If anything, it seems to be moving to a more radical position.

In a word. NO!

Were they trying to win over Catholics and evangelicals?

“Were they trying to win over Catholics and evangelicals?”
And if so, why are they the holy grain and why do you think they only care about abortion.
For progressives, the bloggers here spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about abortion and the pro-life agenda. Heck, this might as well be Rod Dreher’s blog if the only thing people are going to talk about is abortion.
If we are going to change the religious conversation in the U.S. and among progressives, focusing on abortion to the exclusion of everything else probably isn’t the answer. Unless you just want to sound like Focus on the Family.

Hey, I’m on your side, Michael. I guess I wasn’t clear enough with my question. I should have followed up the question “Were they trying to win over Catholics and evangelicals?” with the following question:
Isn’t it about time we saw a political party refuse to pander to the whims of a narrow special interest group?
To follow up on your point, abortion is the only thing that allows the religious right to live and thrive – well I guess gay rights/marriage, too. Take those away and no one listens to those people. So some of these smart geezers in politics need to think deeply about this and figure out a way to neutralize them and take away their power, a power that is totally disproportionate to this group’s actual size.
And I agree that we haven’t gotten to the place yet as a country where we can really have a productive conversation about religion and its role in the political sphere. What we have now is more like a Jerry Springer freak show, with people yelling and punching at each other, and some guys in the background juggling with their pants down around their ankles.

Oh, and I agree with you about this blog. The bloggers are wonderful, but I’ve never seen so many Republican moles before in my life posting away on these comment boards. It’s quite amazing, really.

Okay — no response. Well then, I’ll just rewrite it:
I am a practicing (very important distinction) Catholic, prolife and at heart a Democrat — just the voting bloc the Dems seem to be trying to win with this new language, but it’s not enough. It still embraces a hardened stance with a little bit of language acknowledging that babies can be good! Practicing Catholics are not going to be won over by this language especially with the party’s candidate twice voting against providing medical help to babies outside the mother’s body who somehow survived an abortion. Not with a party who defends the right to stab a baby in the skull at it is partially out of the birth canal, and calls that the mother’s choice.
Traditionally, in this country, Catholics have voted (D) until the Dems embraced a hard abortion rights position with no room for dissent or compromise. My former governor, the late Bob Casey Sr., was not permitted to speak at the Dem convention in 1992 (Thanks, Bill and Hillary!) because of his prolife views. Now, groups like Democrats for Life and Feminists for Life are being paid lip service by the Democrats, but the party still has a long way to go before anything like real “choice” on abortion is embraced in its platform.

Practicing Catholics are not going to be won over by this language especially with the party’s candidate twice voting against providing medical help to babies outside the mother’s body who somehow survived an abortion.
So who are practicing Catholics going to vote for? The supporter of unjust war? The candidate whose platform is anti-immigrant and pro-death penalty? The candidate whose platform is hostile to the poor?

As to James’ statement that Catholics and Evangelicals are a “narrow special interest group” with “power that is totally disproportionate to its size,” I beg to differ. Look at the numbers. A very sizeable proportion of the American electorate self-identify as either Catholic or (as with Yours Truly) Evangelical. The Obama campaign clearly understands that, with the polls showing a tight race with McCain, Obama needs to pick up as many Catholics and Evangelicals as he can. Smart move.
And, as to James’ complaint about “Republican moles” on this blog: I have been registered as a Democrat since 1974, and have worked on the campaigns of several Democratic candidates. I am not a Republican, and am no fan of the GOP. James appears to assume that “real Democrats” are secular (or theologically very liberal) pro-choicers. That illustrates the very problem the Obama campaign is trying to address.
So let’s get back to the real question, shall we? Will the new draft platform language attract pro-life Evangelicals and Catholics back to the Democratic ticket? I think an astute political analyst would say no.
To attract pro-life Evangelicals and Catholics, the platform would have to do two things: (1) admit that even though Democrats disagree over the circumstances under which abortion may be morally justified or should be legally restricted, all Democrats will work together to find ways to reduce the number of abortions. The draft stops short of actually saying this. (2) explicitly agree that (as pro-choicers often say) “nobody is actually pro-abortion.” I would do that through some kind of statement that describes abortion as “something less than good.” My choice of language would be to say that “abortion is always tragic.” Anyhow, smart political analysts can find a way to wordsmith such a statement in a way that honors both the pro-choice and pro-life viewpoint.
One way or the other, Evangelicals and Catholics need some recognition that the Democratic party is big enough to accommodate them.

So who are practicing Catholics going to vote for? The supporter of unjust war? The candidate whose platform is anti-immigrant and pro-death penalty? The candidate whose platform is hostile to the poor?
Many of us stay home on election day.

In response to Bill:
I intended no connection between my comment about Republican moles and my comment about the Democratic party not catering to the desires of a narrow special interest group.
Regarding the size of the Catholic/Evangelical contingent, who knows? It depends a lot on how you define those terms. What I do know is that there are a great many uninformed people in this country who have very strong opinions about how the government should cater to their beliefs (even though it’s unlikely they’ve ever stopped to think critically about those beliefs), and I think it’s time that the government stopped doing that, just like I think it’s time the government stopped taking money from lobbyist groups like the NRA or from Big Oil, etc. etc. When I say the government, I mean candidates running for office who take huge handouts from these groups and then are beholden to them later to do their bidding.
We live in a pluralistic society – a society that must retain its secular component in order to preserve the crucial divide between church and state.
Finally, I fail to see how semantics will change the matter for most Christians who care about the issue of abortion. I will generalize and say that most people, from my experience and from what I see and read in the media, are “bottom-line” people. If the Democratic party has any allowance for abortion at all, whether or not they say it’s a bad thing, these people who feel strongly that abortion should be outlawed are simply not ever going to vote for the Democrats – because this is almost always a deal breaker for them. It’s a “bottom-line” issue for them.

As someone who considers myself to be a Progressive Christian, I welcome the additional language because I am also an adoptive parent. Whether or not one favors abortion rights, I hope that most compassionate people would feel that adoption should be looked upon as a favorable option to a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy, and that education about how the process works is a sensible idea. When I was a new mother particularly I thought about this a lot. For a couple of years, whenever I passed those big, scary anti-abortion billboards that said things like “Jesus knew you in the womb” or “Pregnancy Crisis Help” I would write down the phone number. Then I would call the number and say I was a young woman in trouble who wanted information about how to place my child for adoption. 99% of the time, they had no information or advice for me.
I got the impression that these agencies were devoted to just trying to scare young women (or guilting them) into not terminating their pregnancies, while the same time offering no alternatives to people who really weren’t ready to be a parent. I hope this has changed, and if legislation can be passed to give more options to these young women I am all for it.

connie: That’s too bad that you had a bad experience with a few crisis pregnancy centers — since they receive little government funding (practically nothing compared to Planned Parenthood), rely on volunteers, and, especially in the early days of their inception, having few outside resources to draw on other than prayer, it doesn’t surprise me that the quality of their services would vary. Things have gotten better.
Also, “Jesus knew you in the womb”. How is this scary, exactly? As a Christian, you no doubt have come across this in Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you”. What’s so scary about being known and loved by God before we are born?

How wonderful that you feel “as a Christian” you have the right to demean others, and others’ views and observations. I “as a Christian” don’t feel that’s helpful or fruitful to a meaningful discussion.