Part if Ms. Harding's column is below; the whole is here:
http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/feature/2009/11/10/stupak_stupidity/print.html
It's an exciting moment, and there's a chance to make a real
difference if this latest swell of righteous indignation doesn't
lead directly to the same old shit: Some of us panic about losing
a Democratic majority and start hollering at others to quit being
so picky and oversensitive about our "single issues" and take one
for the team. (Again. Still. Always.) If we can work together as a
bona fide progressive movement, rather than a bunch of competing
groups who will all ultimately settle for holding our noses and
blocking the worst Republicans, we might actually force the
Democrats to give us more than empty shout-outs on the campaign
trail. But if some of us will sacrifice gay rights for a chance at
advancing our own agendas, and others will sacrifice reproductive
rights for a chance at advancing theirs, and a ludicrous number of
self-identified progressives will sacrifice pretty much everything
they claim to believe in, just because the words "Democratic
majority" sound so much better than the alternative, then nothing
will change.
So the wise, objective, pragmatic mansplainers can go ahead and
tell us little ladies How This All Works one more time, but now
we're telling you: We've not only heard it, we've tried it. We've
tried electing "moderate" Democrats who would be obvious
conservatives in any era marked less by far-right lunacy. We've
tried compromising our values in hopes of taking baby steps
forward. We've tried sacrificing the rights of women and every
minority group under the sun, so as not to look unreasonable or
oversensitive to those who resent having to share this country at
all with people they find undesirable. And we've seen where it
leads: "We choose to play nice, our party trades on our freedoms.
We choose to object, our party resents and blames us for failure."
Really, when those are the options, there's only one logical
conclusion: This is not our party. We've known that for too long,
and yet the Democrats have known too well that they could bank on
our money and our votes as long as the GOP remained even more not
our party. But something's changed. Sixty-four Democrats voted to
block women's access to legal medical services. That may not be
quite as repulsive as some Republican shenanigans, but the
difference is only one of degree. If the point of women voting for
"moderate" Democrats is to avoid a majority that's actively
hostile to women, then those who voted for the Stupak-Pitts
amendment just proved that there's no point at all. And
progressive women have finally had enough. We are ready to go
there. Are Democrats ready to try getting elected without us?
-- Kate Harding
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