By Dave Andrusko
As we reach the end of the week and the end of August, the very cloudy picture of Democrats running for their party’s presidential nomination grows a little bit clearer.
*Abortion-on-demand New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, she, the choice of a fraction of 1% of Democrats, bowed out. In a field comprised of no-nonsense abortion advocates, Gillibrand tried her best to be the most militant and the most obnoxious, no mean feat.
As Patrick Goodenough explained
During that visit to Georgia, Gillibrand pledged as president to codify Roe vs. Wade into law; to end the Hyde Amendment (which prohibits federal funding of abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is endangered); and, in what she described as her “most sweeping step” as president, to “guarantee access to reproductive healthcare – including abortion – no matter what state you live in.”
“I would ensure that no state can prevent private insurance from covering abortion as reproductive health care,” she added.
The following month, Gillibrand in an interview with the Des Moines Register essentially equated pro-life views with racism and anti-Semitism, declaring that for such issues, there is no “fair other side” of the argument.
“There is no moral equivalency when you come to racism,” she said. “And I do not believe there is a moral equivalency when it comes to changing laws that deny women reproductive freedom.”
You can’t say she didn’t try.
*The next of an interminable series of debates will take place September 12. With the field reduced to ten candidates, all will be on the same stage at the same time in Houston.
In alphabetical order, the ten are former Vice President Joe Biden; New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker; South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg; Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro; California Sen. Kamala Harris; Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar; former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke; Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders; Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren; and Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
The frontrunners, for now, are Biden, Sanders, and Warren, according to Real Clear Politics.
*And then there is O’Rourke, who is competing to take up Gillibrand’s mantle of the mostest of the most pro-abortion Democrats. Katie Yoder wrote of O’Rourke, tooling along with 2.4% support, who spoke at a town hall Q&A held at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. A man asked
“Someone asked you specifically about third-trimester abortions, and you said that’s a decision left up to the mother,” he said, remembering O’Rourke’s past comments during a Cleveland event in March. He wanted to know if O’Rourke still agreed with that. ….
“This is a decision that neither you, nor I, nor the United States government should be making. That’s a decision for the woman to make,” O’Rourke said to the crowd’s delight. “We want her to have the best possible access to care and to a medical provider.”
After warning his audience about threats to abortion and Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the U.S., O’Rourke concluded that “I don’t question the decisions that a woman makes.”
“Only she knows what she knows, and I want to trust her with that,” he added.
Welcome to the Democrat Party circa 2019 where extremism in defense of unlimited abortion is no vice and moderation in pursuit of more dead babies is no virtue.