All in all, I'd say that this platform does NOT do what was necessary to win substantial numbers of Catholics or moderate evangelicals.
What do the other Revivalists think? What do readers think? Will the Democrats' proposed new language on abortion in the party platform win over some values voters?
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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.
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