You can't have anti-choice politicians in the DemocraticParty, receiving money and support from the DemocraticParty's members and the party's machinery, when the platform of the party clearly states that Democrats "unequivocally support RoeVsWade and a woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortlon, regardless of ability to pay, and oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine that right".
Just about all professional Democratic politicians want to make the DemocraticParty hospitable to anti-choice people (and all 'other siders' of the DemocraticParty's different special interest groups) , as noted in this article from 12/2004: http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/washington/wnb121504.htm
The only way to do that is for the party to not take a stance on abortion, to remove any reference to 'choice'. That's certainly true of HowardDean.
During HowardDean's tenure as chairman of the DNC, he indicated in several interviews that the intent was to move the DemocraticParty from referring to abortion at all in its platform. Here's one of those interviews , from 11/1/2005:
Video here or Transcript here.
January 14, 2005 - Dems May Waver on Choice, Repro Rights http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2144/context/archive
Howard Dean's a nice guy, but he's not a liberal and definitely not wed to sacrosanct DemocraticParty positions (pro-choice and public healthcare).
Most voters judge politicians by their personalities and mistakenly assume politicians' ideological positions for their own when they've decided they personally like the politician. Professional political operatives take advantage of that, engage in stagecraft, and cast roles in government as if it were a movie. Who looks/sounds like a president/senator/congressman/ etc.? Who has the countenance, the gravitas? Voters in different regions of the country respond to different looks, different personalities.
Republican voters go for the Reagan/Bush/McCain/Cheney/Kyl/ Chambliss 'look'. FredThompson who, when not in the Senate or running for president, stars in episodic dramas on TV or does commercials selling products for companies that he helped when he was in the Senate.
Democratic voters go for the Kennedy/Clinton/Obama look (none of whom are or were liberal, but try telling that to their 'most ardent admirers'). All of these politicians were and are pro-corporate, pro-MilitaryIndustrialComplex. The only differences have been on social issues, and on the Democratic side, they have proven to be, let's say, 'less committed' to their party's stated values, ideals, and goals, i.e. the People's issues. And that's what defines whether one is a Democrat or not.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
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