OHIO VALLEY — Actress Martha Plimpton is seen rejoicing as she talks about the “best” abortion she ever had, broadcast live on a television above a gas station counter on U.S. Route 422 between Ohio and Pennsylvania.
A woman with a nametag identifying her as a manager rolled her eyes and said to no one in particular as she stocked shelves behind the counter, “And they wonder why people here don’t vote Democrat anymore.”
Plimpton, 46, is best known for her role in Steven Spielberg’s classic 1980s children’s adventure film “The Goonies,” and spoke about it in an interview with Dr. Willie Parker at the #ShoutYourAbortion event in Seattle in June.
Actions like Plimpton’s don’t aid the Democratic cause regain power and influence in Washington, at least not among Main Street voters. Nor do they aid Democrats win local races.
“Democrats used to debate the right to have one, and that was a view that most voters shared,” said Michael Wear, a theologically conservative evangelical Christian Democrat who worked in Barack Obama’s White House office of religious activities. “I don’t understand why, 14 months before the midterm elections, you’re pushing out 20 percent of the voters who would like to support Democrats? Or, even better, why you’re talking about pro-life Democrats like they’re aliens that just landed on Earth?”
It’s infrequent for someone who has had an abortion to celebrate it – Plimpton clearly doesn’t get that. Maybe the privileged class is doing it? Well, even if they did, it wouldn’t aid the Democratic Party win back voters. Or maybe it’s the intellectual class? Well, even if they did, it wouldn’t win back a majority either. Or maybe it’s the celebrity class? There aren’t enough people in that class to win back the House or the Senate.
In brief, this is not the message you want to convey by winning all the lower seats the party has squandered under the pressure of identity politics.
It’s not that voters like Republican candidates more; they just like Democrats less.
The face of the Democratic Party is increasingly becoming the face of celebrity, scoundrels, and superiority. The people the Party attracted to its “standing for the working class” credo have fallen out of its reach; they have lost touch with their needs and values; and they have certainly lost touch with any kind of meaningful message.
They don’t value difficult work, they don’t demand that their supporters stand for abortion rights, they expect them to be agnostic and represent their diverse political views on identity. Instead of uniting people and becoming part of a larger political party, the only way forward is division.
“We’ve seen a tendency in some parts of the progressive coalition to respond to Republican extremism by becoming extremists in our own votes,” Wear said. “Well, that’s not helpful.”
The idea that the Democratic problem is a lack of “enough strength” in progressiveness is really a Democratic weakness, Wear said. But he still hopes things will change. “They have to, or we won’t win,” he said.
Last week, the Senate held a confirmation hearing for Amy Coney Barrett, a Notre Dame law professor and nominee for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. During the hearing, California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein attacked Barrett for her Roman Catholic faith.
Feinstein confronted her with some of the material she had used in her writings on the role of religion in public life, as well as from academic lectures she had given to Christian legal groups.
Here in the Ohio Valley, lower house Democrats have lost a lot of seats; on both sides of the aisle, Pennsylvania and Ohio, voters began to shift away from the left after Al Gore’s 2000 elections for state legislator, senator, Congress, and president.
National exit poll data shows President Trump winning with Catholics over Hillary Clinton, 52 percent to 45 percent. That’s a huge change from the last two elections, when Catholics voted for Barack Obama by 9 percent in 2008 and 2 percent in 2012.
Why does this matter? Well, in states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and throughout the Midwest, the Catholic vote is a very significant bloc no matter what you’re running for — and that includes winning back a majority in 2018.
“The last thing Democrats should be doing is deliberately stalling on the people we’re going to need to win,” Wear said. “If we have one shot at taking back Congress, this strategy won’t get it,” he said.
