Would love opinions on Monday night CNN dem debate

Parent Cafe
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<p>Someone mentioned Mike Huckabee. When he was governor he paroled unrepentant violent criminals, even murderers, over the objections of the prosecutors and the victims’ families. Many of them went on to commit more violent crimes. When a prosecutor wrote to complain, Huckabee had a staffer write him a letter saying: “the governor laughed out loud” and advised him to stay off the caffiene. </p>

<p>The worst of course was the Dumond case. It still gives me chills to think about his sending a rapist and admitted killer to the unsuspecting citizens of another state the way he did.</p>

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<p>They say all politics is personal, but when it comes to abortion, people seem to be able to separate what they do in private from the stance they take in public.</p>

<p>Though the abortion rate is about 60% lower for evangelicals than it is for the general public, one in five women having abortions are born-again or Evangelical Christians. </p>

<p>Catholics have abortions at the same rate as the general public, and Protestants at 69% the rate.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/prabort2.html[/url]”>http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/prabort2.html&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2814096.html[/url]”>http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2814096.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Needless to say, there are numerous accounts of right-to-lifers having an abortion at the clinic across town from the one they’re picketing, such as those addressed in an article called Abortion Clinics’ Toughest Cases (Medical World News, pp 55-61, March 9, 1987). </p>

<p>It’s become quite the legal quagmire. For liability reasons, physicians have to give serious thought to whether people active in the pro-life movement are really able to give informed consent to the abortions they seek.</p>

<p>ETA: Back on Huckabee, oh dear, apparently he’s not so good with money either. The conservative CATO institute gives him a D for fiscal policy. <a href=“http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581/reportcard_table.html[/url]”>http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa581/reportcard_table.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>For those who think Clinton has no chance to lower her negatives and/or even pick up some stray votes from moderate/conservatives, take a look at these two editorials this week from conservative pundits (in addition to the Charles Krautheimer Washington Post piece linked previously).</p>

<p>David Brooks in the New York Times:
<a href=“http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/article/view/?id=2585[/url]”>http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/article/view/?id=2585&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun Times:
<a href=“http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/486563,CST-EDT-HUNT27.article[/url]”>http://www.suntimes.com/news/huntley/486563,CST-EDT-HUNT27.article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>I suspect this comment from Thisoldman was in jest, but let’s not forget that this may be a very real possibility. I am surprised that more people are not ruminating about this…or perhaps the anxiety it brings up is just too great…</p>

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<p>Re: universal pre-k. As i-dad informed us, Hillary has learned her lesson from her health care debacle and is now a believer in incrementalism. This is where the trust comes in. Do I trust any position she has now? No. Her “voluntary” pre-K proposal (few states have been known to turn down federal money when it comes to education) scares a lot of people, myself included.</p>

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<p>This is a great thread. You all are terrific. Much better than TV pundits (sorry if that’s not saying much. I mean it to say a lot.)
Does anyone have any perspective on the new crop of eligible voters in 2008–the 18-21 year-olds who weren’t old enough to vote in the 2004 election? I think it’s a sizeable population (given the intense competition for college!), and I wonder if there has been any polling on their nascent political proclivities. Combine them with internet campaigning, and they may turn out to have some influence. . .if they turn out to vote!
Any opinions?</p>

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<p>(does this derail the thread?)</p>

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<p>^There is another thread about youth and Politics started by I-dad. I think it was an attempt to discuss your point, but it got off track a bit…</p>

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<p>thanks, 1sokkermom–I’ll take look.</p>

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<p>timely,
let me explain something to you. Pro-choice does not equal pro-abortion. Pro-choice is a legally focused position pertaining to the legislation of personal decision making. A pro-choice position does not in itself equate with that individual’s own moral position on abortion. There are people, both atheists and beliievers, btw, who oppose abortion on moral grounds, but believe it to be an invasion of personal decision making to require others (the entire American public) to align with their subjective moral convictions. Such people call themselves, accurately, pro-choice.</p>

<p>While I do not wish to hijack the thread or encourage a derailing of the train into an interminable debate on when life begins, understand that the term “life” is where the problem lies. While a visible, breathing & fully functioning human being will be universally recognized as “life,” scientists and ethicists are hardly unanimous on the 2 extreme ends of the life spectrum (its beginning AND its ending). Thus, many of those people, as well as millions of lay people, do not want our legislatures and courts creating & enforcing law over premises that even those whose business is the study & treatment of life, cannot agree on.</p>

<p>This is not just a technical legal concern. This genuinely involves choice in the most universal sense: the right to <em>keep</em> one’s moral convictions when they oppose the state, including the right to cherish one’s strict religious beliefs. The same Government that has been given permission by its citizens to impose non-choice on an individual by prohibiting abortion is a Government that could also be given the opposite permission: to REQUIRE abortions. While China hasn’t been “given” permission to require abortions, the gov’t has certainly assumed that right. The point is: it is the equivalent, opposite side of the coin. This is why many anti-abortion people are pro-choice in their positions and their voting.</p>

<p>The secondary consideration – at least as has been true too often for people claiming to be “pro-life” – is that many of them are really pro-birth, with a focus on life in the womb, but not on the funding for the care of that child, should the family fall into poverty (gov’t subsidies), illness (health care), etc. And in the past, many have been strongly pro-death-penalty. (Also known, as pro-death.)</p>

<p>All the above illustrates why it is a tricky situation to seize ambiguous terminology as a political position, and then claim everyone who won’t agree to that terminology is a baby-killer. (I’m not saying you do that, timely.) I am merely explaining why accurate terms describe positions more clearly. </p>

<p>Interesteddad is correct. The opposing terms are:</p>

<p>pro-choice: moral choice about abortion is the individual’s to decide, not the government’s.
non-choice: the government is in charge of our morality, can & should enforce that.</p>

<p>And there’s a slippery-slope problem if one says, “Well, we’ll just limit it to the abortion issue; we won’t let the gov’t decide any other personal morality.”</p>

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<p>Very well put, epiphany.^</p>

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<p>One can make up wild stories about what any candidate “might” do if one is prejudiced enough against him or her. </p>

<p>If they’re spreading the rumor that H. is going to make government pre-K mandatory, it shows either pretty blatent dishonesty or appalling ignorance about the Constitution. You can’t require parents to send their children to a government school or to any school (vs. homeschooling) for that matter.</p>

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<p>That’s news to me.</p>

<p><a href=“Palau | Facts & Information | Infoplease”>http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/AO112617.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I doubt many poor, inner-city women are able to stay home and homeschool their kids. Sort of defeats the whole idea behind the program, anyway.</p>

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<p>Please show me where it says in that link that ANY state has forbidden homeschooling, much less private or parochial school?</p>

<p>We had this discussion in another thread and several posters provided links to Supreme Court decisions saying states can’t. </p>

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<p>Wait, I’m confused. I thought the objection was that evangelicals think the program will be mandatory. Now it’s that they don’t want poor, inner-city kids being able to go to day care? </p>

<p>If their mothers can’t stay home, where do you think the kids are gonig now? And how does poor kids having access to pre-K hurt evangelicals? </p>

<p>Do they really not understand that “Child A having opportunity to go to public pre-school” is not the same thing as “Child B being forced to attend the public pre-school against his parents’ wishes?”</p>

<p>And let’s face it, the evangelicals were against Hillary long before any pre-K proposals were made. </p>

<p>Look at why they were clamoring for Wayne Dumond to be freed even though he showed no remorse for his crimes: because the 17 year old girl he most recently raped was a distant relative of the Clintons. </p>

<p>Scoring political points off the Clintons by freeing Dumond was more important than protecting the public from the man who would go on to kill murder two women in less than 6 weeks after being set loose by Huckabee.</p>

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<p>I already addressed this point above.</p>

<p>Have a nice day.</p>

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<p>Interesteddad: Just in case people don’t realize you were joking when you said “Even though Clinton is thoroughly despised at the ultra-liberal blog Daily KOS (she gets between 5% and 8% in their straw polls; they favor Fidel Castro and Ralph Nadar with a smidgeon of support for moderate Dennis Kuchinich),” I thought, as a daily <a href=“http://www.dailykos.com%5B/url%5D”>www.dailykos.com</a> visitor, I’d add that in fact every straw pool I’ve seen has given Edwards a commanding lead over everyone else, followed (usually) by Obama with Clinton 3rd. We lefties like her well enough, we just think she’s too divisive a figure to win. The next president must be a person who can draw both sides of the political divide together unlike the ‘uniter decider’ we’ve got now. Oh and Nader couldn’t get a vote at Daily Kos these days if he did the dance of the seven veils with Impeach Cheney banners.</p>

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<p>Oh, I see you just edited your post.</p>

<p>Have a nice day.</p>

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<p>QUOTE:
//We lefties like her well enough, we just think she’s too divisive a figure to win. The next president must be a person who can draw both sides of the political divide together unlike the ‘uniter decider’ we’ve got now. Oh and Nader couldn’t get a vote at Daily Kos these days if he did the dance of the seven veils with Impeach Cheney banners.//</p>

<p>Well said. </p>

<p>Just to note in addition, in case has not been said (sorry if it has): The problem with HRC is that she is both not-left-enough for even much of the democratic base (Iraq, et al.), she is way too left in her <em>rhetoric</em> and in her <em>style</em> for many centrist Republicans and independents. (The contest is obviously not with conservative Republicans: she’d be lucky to get one vote from them.)</p>

<p>She is divisive in a different way than Bush, but significantly so. Even when one examines her individual positions & cannot label some of those “liberal,” she associates herself with a certain entrenched ‘liberal crowd,’ if you will. This is one of the points I was trying to get at earlier, and I acknowledge that I still haven’t expressed myself very well about it. I was putting it in the context of her visible feminism, by which I meant to imply a certain rigidity of those she is forever allowing herself to be photographed with, almost exclusively. It’s as if she’s afraid to move out of that ‘protective circle.’ If this bothers me, a person with an educational & political background not unlike hers, so much so that it makes me not want to vote for her (and though I am her gender!), I can’t help wondering if it doesn’t bother people quite unlike me and quite unlike her. I do not see her appealing to the broad American public.</p>

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<p>Novelisto: Yep, that’s the way I see it as well. I’d certainly vote for HC if she got the nomination, but agree with your assessment that “she’s too divisive a figure to win.” That’s definitely the fear.</p>

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<p>The problem with Mrs. Clinton isn’t her policies, her gender or her cleavage (G). It’s her name. After the 8 yrs when the ‘chattering classes’ spent untold hours denigrating her, her husband, their child, their style, their activities, you name it, real and fantastic both, conservatives shrink like salted snails whenever they hear the ‘C’ word. Look how many people are still blaming Bill for everything that isn’t good even after almost 8 yrs of a Bushdom that immediately stopped doing <em>anything</em> that had the Clinton touch upon it, good, bad or indifferent. </p>

<p>Want to derail a conversation about something that Bush is doing – bring up Bill. “Clinton did that too!” “Clinton did worse!” “You didn’t complain when Clinton did it!” Believe me…I have relatives who are in the 25% who think Bush is just dandy and conversation can be a minefield. Maybe in 20 years when Chelsea runs for president against Jenna, this country will be able to take a balanced, nuanced look at the Clinton years, but not yet. Not now. </p>

<p>Besides which, Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton is not a good progression for the country. The powerful office should not be the property of any single family. I feel about a HRC Whitehouse the same way I would feel about a JEB Whitehouse were Jeb Bush running.</p>