Politics: much better, Howard

Better. Not perfect.

I think we need to talk about abortion differently. Republicans have painted us into a corner where they have forced us to defend abortion. I don't know anybody who's for abortion.

We can make common ground with folks. The issue we need to debate is not whether abortion is a good thing. The issue we need to debate is whether a woman gets to make up her own mind about her health care or whether Tom DeLay gets to make up her mind.

The issue of course then becomes, why would Dems not be "for abortion," but defend it legally? Wouldn't Dems be defending murder?

Well, if Howard doesn't watch his rhetoric, that's the logical attack to follow.

Of course, the reason why pro-choice Dems shouldn't be "for abortion" is because abortion is a rough thing for a women to go through, physically, psychologically, financially, socially, etc. Nobody wants to have an abortion. But that isn't necessarily because their is some sort of unilateral consensus that abortion is murder. And I think that's the distinction that will neutralize this kind of well-meaning change in rhetoric.

If the pro-lifers think that Dems are still defending murder, for any reason, then nothing has changed from their perspective. There's no room for nuance on the religious right. If the Dem leadership thinks otherwise, maybe they should simply stop thinking at all.