Count me unimpressed by this TNR piece. Basically it says that the Democrats need to move to the center on abortion if they want to remain in power. And, yet, in four of the past five elections, pro-choice candidates for president have gotten more votes than their opponents. And South Dakota and Colorado rejected sweeping abortion bans on Tuesday. Where is the evidence that the voters are going to punish Obama if he doesn't moderate his course? Linker notes that Obama didn't improve his results among Evangelicals and White Catholics, which is true but misleading in the latter case, as Obama vastly improved his performance among Hispanics, who are inexplicably excluded among Catholics (I guess it's because only White religious types count as the foundation of a party. Like we haven't heard that before...) In any event, evangelicals would not vote for Obama unless he supported something like a sweeping ban on abortion, and even then they probably wouldn't because evangelicals are generally very conservative and not predisposed to support with Democrats. It's, once again, a variant of the "Democrats need to win White working class voters" argument we heard during the primaries. Why? Do their votes count for more than anyone else's? I hate to bring it up, but Barack Obama won 52.5% of the vote, regardless of (or because of) his pro-choice views. Exit polls showed that, among voters who voted on the issue, the effect was neutral for Obama. The notion that America has a lot of single-issue voters on abortion might be true, but these are not the majority, and most people are flexible on who they support for president, regardless of this issue. I know a lot of people who hold strong opinions on the matter on both sides are dismayed by this, but it's true.
And I would also dispute the notion that the Democrats are moving "left" on their rhetoric on abortion. It's the Republicans that are becoming more extreme by pushing bans on abortion, on a state and federal level, that even heavily pro-life states like South Dakota are rebelling against. The Democrats are proposing abortion reduction (as Obama said in the third debate), which seems like a good middle ground option to me. In terms of which party "sounds" more moderate on abortion, I think the Democrats win easily these days. In the final analysis, though, rhetoric on this issue is less important than actions. And I just don't see too much evidence that Americans reject a President who is pro-choice. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Basically, this article seems to be in service to a preexisting argument rather than the results of serious study, and is more than a little self-serving, banal, and silly. I would say that it's embarrassing that The New Republic publishes such sloppy work, but that ain't exactly news.
