Welcome good news for Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts, the Denver Post reports:
Colorado abortion opponents say they have enough signatures to put an abortion-ending proposal on the ballot this fall.
Abortion opponents turned in more than 46,000 signatures Thursday.
The group needs about 15,700 of those signatures to be deemed valid for the question to go on the ballot this fall.
There was some concern a few weeks ago when Secretary of State Bernie Buescher announced that proponents had failed to turn in enough valid signatures to survive a random audit–46,000 more should pad the margin much better for them, Cory Gardner must have passed it around his church at offering time with greater urgency.
If you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade and don’t understand why a ballot initiative to essentially ban all abortions in Colorado would be good news for Democrats, we’ll say it again: in 2008, the “eggmendment” went down by a crushing margin, over 70%, while Republican candidates nervously evaded questions about it from their base. If hardcore pro-life groups get it on the ballot for 2010, it’s worth more in terms of turnout to Democrats who will show up in droves to vote this down, while Republicans risk alienating moderates by supporting it (and their own right flank if they don’t).
Democrats looking to get their base voters off the bench should consider this a huge gift.
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I think this is a rather eggciting development myself that bodes well for Dems election time.
“I buried Paul” And then I went to Denny’s for an omelet ……
…to get to do earned media appearances and TV interviews to denounce this worthless crap once again. I’ve got nothing better to do with my time.
I also look forward to the fundraising efforts we’ll have to gear towards our overstretched pro-choice base in a down economy.
Realpolitik consideratons aside, I don’t view this as good news.
they’re going to hell.
If that business about taking the loaves and fishes of just a few people and feeding the throng isn’t all about redistributing the wealth, I don’t know what it is!
Tactically, it may help Democrats. But it again cheapens and corrupts the political dialogue in Colorado. Thus, it’s bad news.
Not only that, I don’t like playing “chicken” with eggs….
(translated: Though passage may be extremely unlikely, I prefer reducing its likelihood even further to gaining partisan advantage by running the small risk of the improbable occurring).
was cheapened and corrupted a long time ago. This is just another one on the heap.
will have “Egg on their faces” trying to “scramble” for answers that present a “sunny side” to their argument.
It will be fun watching them be “basted” and “boiled” from both sides, republic and Democrat.
there is no way one can be “over easy” on this issue.
anyone that comes close to this non issue will be “on toast”. or surely be “runny” away from it.
(ok I could not help myself)
Common Colorado Pols. That dig at Gardner is not right. (lets see how fast you respond)
is not supporting the amendment.
This could really be good news for dems…
When my priest allowed someone to put up a table inside the church last Sunday with copies of the petition to sign, I assumed Archbishop Chuck had commanded it. I guess the dear father just got all mavericky.
Well, I hope it’s good news for Democrats. It would make me all warm and happy inside if this little stunt backfired on the dear father.
n/t
As Jersey Transplant pointed out in one of the last diaries on this subject:
Even in a Republican year, it would be virtually impossible to have a 25 percentage point turnaround on such a divisive issue in just two years.
I wish we didn’t have to fight the same battles over and over.
Feels like Groundhog Day after awhile.
that in Groundhog Day, he eventually got it right, and his day finally ended.
Now, wouldn’t that be nice?
We did in 2008. Unfortunately, we seem to be stuck getting it right over and over and over again.
“getting it right” means not having to get it right again.
For the Bill Murray character, it meant arriving at a sort of personal spiritual equilibrium, in which he understood what really mattered, and stopped letting himself get distracted by the superficialities.
For society, in the culture wars, it means arriving at a social equilibrium, one in which people move away from theocratic and blindly ideological certainties, and agree to be rational people of good will engaged in a civil discourse searching for mutual accomodations that satisfy multiple interests and convictions as efficiently and fairly as possible.
For Bill Murray, it took a magical endless repetition of a single day. For us as a society, I fear that an equally unlikely intervention would be required.
(Or an equally patient time horizon. Martin Luther King Jr. said “The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice,” and John Maynard Keynes said “(People) will do the rational thing, but only after exploring all other alternatives.” In other words, we keep getting it wrong in the short run, leading to getting it ever-more right in the long run. That’s our “Groundhog Day”: Human history).
But the origin of the arc of history qoute is Unitarian minister and abolitionist, Theodore Parker. King borrowed the original sentiment and modified it slightly. (I believe he said the arc of the universe or the arc of the moral universe…) But I realize that the internet is full citations of MLK making this up.
There are tons of misattributions of quotes floating around, to varying degrees. The Keynes quote, in fact, is often attributed to Winston Churchill, because the latter borrowed it and modified it to apply particularly to Americans. JFK’s “Ask not…” quote is actually a slightly modified version of his Connecticut prep school (Choate Rosemary Hall) motto, “Ask not what your school can do for you, but what you can do for your school”. And of course, at the very origins of our country, Jefferson’s modification of Locke’s formulation “Life, liberty, and property” became our national slogan.
Pete Seeger said in concert once, “so if the next song sounds a lot like the last, you’ll know why: All culture is theft.”
Sometimes with a twist. Sometimes straight up.
…We could stop calling this an “anti-abortion” amendment.
If that’s all they wanted, they could write a one-line amendment making abortions illegal in the state of Colorado with whatever exceptions they thought necesary to give it a reasonable chance at success. And it might actually have a reasonable chance at success.
What makes this measure so onerous is how extreme it is. It goes too far in ways that even most people who oppose abortion cannot support.
From the moment sperm hits egg, you have a new person entitled to full Constitutional protection, even if that zygote has yet to even implant in the woman’s uterus and start the hormonal processes of pregnancy. Any sexually actve woman in the second half of her cycle is a potential murderer. Chemotherapy in pregnancy becomes attempted murder. Inheritances will have to be divided among frozen embryos in fertility labs. Embryonic stem cell research, In Vitro fertilization, and most forms of birth control would become illegal.
To call this an anti-abortion proposal gives it too much credit. It would insert the government, laws and courts into private medical and life decisions women make on a daily basis.
…To back up your headline, shouldn’t you be able to quote a Democrat who says thet’re happy about this?