Of course some reporters and editor would run with this…
But Biden and the Democratic Party isn’t gonna back away from supporting abortion rights…
And convention platform statements get forgotten fairly quickly…
A group of more than 100 Christian pastors, religion professors and other advocates is urging the Democratic National Committee to adopt a party platform that’s friendlier to abortion opponents.
In a letter organized by the anti-abortion group Democrats for Life and set to be sent Friday, the group of Christians calls on the Democratic Party to rescind its platform’s support for ending restrictions on federal funding for abortion. That language was added to the party’s 2016 platform, to the frustration of anti-abortion Democrats. Last year, Joe Biden, the Democrat’s presumptive presidential nominee, shifted his position to back an end to restrictions on government funding for abortion.
“We call upon you to recognize the inviolable human dignity of the child, before and after birth,” the group wrote in its letter to the Democratic platform committee, shared in advance with The Associated Press. “We urge you to reject a litmus test on pro-life people of faith seeking office in the Democratic Party.”
Among the signatories of the letter are the Rev. Gabriel Salguero, president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition and a member of former President Barack Obama’s faith-based advisory council; and John DeBerry, a longtime Tennessee state representative and pastor who was recently removed from the Democratic primary ballot due in part to votes against the party’s position.
Democrats for Life Executive Director Kristen Day said that her group had sent a letter opposing the Democratic platform’s 2016 inclusion of language backing the repeal of limits on federal funding for abortion that drew far fewer signatories. This week’s letter, which includes registered Democrats as well as independents, is “a much bigger effort,” she said.
Day also warned that the addition of another position Biden has backed — codification of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling — would alienate anti-abortion religious voters.
Biden is “a little bit ahead” of where Hillary Clinton was in 2016 in terms of faith-based voter outreach, Day said, but the prospect that the Democratic platform would back codification of Roe “would just massively damage relationships with religious voters who don’t necessarily want to see that.”
While Democrats have shifted leftward on abortion in recent years, there’s some evidence that abortion opponents are still open to supporting the party…..
Meanwhile Missouri Sen Josk Hawley–thought to be an early 2024 GOP Presidential candidate–has said that he would oppose any Supreme Court nominee who did not have a record of stating that Roe v Wade was “wrongly decided” prior to their nomination.
Hawley is clearly thinking that no matter what happens to Trump this election that the party will want to move even further right on social issues.
And Tom Cotton says slavery “was a necessary evil.”
Cotton Says Slavery Was ‘Necessary Evil’
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette that slavery was a “necessary evil” for the United States.
Said Cotton: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”
Defense of slavery is an odd sentiment that occasionally pops up among right wingers.
Usually it’s some commentator or evangelical preacher who makes some comment about slaves not having it that bad or praising. Slaveholders for feeding and housing their slaves.
Weird stuff
I do not read that as him defending slavery but somehow minimizing the extent to which it should be historically viewed.
The moral fact is that any single solitary day, hour, etc, that slavery was ever allowed was one too many.
Yes….
And trying to hold school money hostage isn’t how to deal with things ….
Even Trump and DeVoss back off that….
More pathetic whataboutism.
The media quoted Cotton from an interview he gave to the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.
Here’s the full quote:
We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.
There’s quite a bit wrong with that quote, but Cotton is being disingenuous when he claims he never said slavery was a necessary evil. As a reader pointed out:
When you say “As so-and-so said…” you’re asserting the same thing and using “so-and-so” as your rhetorical wing man.
Cotton is clearly making the argument that he agrees with the Founding Fathers arguing that slavery was a “necessary evil.”
Of course, that’s not the kind of thing you really want to be caught saying in 2020, so Cotton took a page from the Trump playbook and dismissed it as “fake news.”
Question of the day: after four years of a racist Republican Administration when is our friend Corey Ray going to stop defending racism?
This is a pathetic to excuse Trump 2.0
I don’t see all that much difference in the phrases “defending slavery” and “minimizing the extent to which it should be historically viewed”.
In 2020, one would think that politicians should be able to see that systemic racism is real and the we need (for openers) to change how we communicate about the problem. And we don’t get where we need to get when people like Tom Cotton “minimize” our shameful history on the topic or when conservatives (who want us to believe that they believe that racism is evil) defend or “minimize” Cotton’s comments.
Would Tom Cotton and all the conservatives defunding schools be asking for reparations if their ancestors were at the receiving end of the “necessary evil”? I think his op-eds would certainly look a little different.
Why Cotton would wade into a subject like this at this time shows one who lacks good political instincts .
I mean what in the Hell is his point?
Dumb move in my view and one that’s going to haunt him in the future.
He’s wading because this is his chosen route to the 24 nomination.
All racist all the time.
The Cotton/NY Times 1619 Project IS a BIT complicated ….
The author of the report pushes the idea that the American Revolution was ‘MOSTLY’ about keeping slavery in America….
That view is challenged by other historians…who DO acknowledge that slavery was an issue during the Revolution, something is absent from ANY teaching about that period in America’s history…
The Times had the author back alway from the ‘MOST’ part in the study….
There is an effort to change the way the public school’s talk about slavery and Revolution with the project….
Cotton is against this….
The thing is that Cotton wants Congress to ban the 1619 Projects view from school’s….
Embracing it would cut the district/schools federal funds….
Pelosi isn’t gonna approve Cotton’s amendment…
So school’s can use the study in their teaching….
IT IS important from America’s student’s to know that slaves have in fact help build Washington DC and have laboured long and hard thru out this countries history….
But being essential?
Fuck U Senator….
They didn’t get paid…
They weren’t free to not show up for work….
Their names ain’t on the corner stones or in the credits after the movie….
Slavery was legal in the British Empire until 1834, a generation after the Revolution. So it’s hard for me to see that protecting slavery was a principal (rather than, perhaps, an ancillary or subsidiary) motive for the Revolution.
Just as blameworthy but rather more important — and obliquely referred to more than once in the Declaration of Independence —was the asserted need to remove or reduce Imperial restrictions (such as the Proclamation Line of 1763) on Euro-American settlers advancing into Indian lands.