Hillary Gets It

On Thursday, I chatted with Senator Clinton at the Dubuque Reunion Reception in Russell Senate Office Builiding. She was working the room with the Mayor of Dubuque (or the room was working her, as the Mayor was steering other sponsors toward her for photos), but I was able to grab a minute or two's conversation.

I shared with her that, if she wants either Iowa or Virginia to turn blue in the General Election (Iowa was blue, but turned to red in '04 over the partial birth abortion issue), she would have to take the Catholics back from the right to life movement, whose agenda is more about gutting the 14th Amendment and civil rights for racial and sexual minorities than about abortion. If Roe were overturned, women and girls seeking abortions would simply go to "abortion states" and nary an abortion would be prevented. I told her that the answer to preventing abortions is a gauranteed income provided through a $5,000 refundable tax credit for every child. She agreed, because she gets it.

This is bad news for the pro-life activists, who don't support such a gauranteed income but would instead jail doctors. It is cold comfort because if Hillary stresses this point, quite a few Catholic Democrats will return to their roots in the Democratic Party, and will be joined by quite a few Evangelicals. This would obliterate forever the GOP authoritarian base in a way that it will never recover from.