CLINTON NON.

CLINTON NON. To hop into the debate, I pretty much fully endorse the arguments of Matt, Sam, and Ezra. In particular, I would like to highlight the apercus that " nobody is entitled to a presidential nomination on account of unfair treatment at the hands of scoundrels, and liberals should avoid the danger of judging Clinton's political maneuvers and struggles from her perspective rather than from the perspective of what's best for liberalism," and "Clinton's new dissembling, on an issue where the record is so clear, fits a pattern: Not only is she not much of a liberal, she actually seems determined to insult liberals' intelligence." I'm also not persuaded by the vote-counting data adduced by Garance. You can't compare raw vote totals without considering the fact that Clinton represents one of the most liberal states in the country and Edwards represented one of the most conservative. In context, it seems to me that Edwards' voting record is at least as progressive, and certainly his platform is considerably more so. I agree that perceptions of her as an arch-liberal are largely driven by sexism, but this isn't really a good reason to support her in the primary unless she actually is as progressive as the other major candidates, and (the fine record of leadership on women's issues discussed by Garance and Dana notwithstanding) I don't think she is.Speaking of women's issues, in fairness to Clinton I actually think there's one issue where Garance sells Clinton a bit short:

This moderation has put Clinton in a position to help resolve tensions around some truly divisive national issues, such as abortion, on which a female leader has more freedom to stake out new ground and also faces more expectations to act. Since 2005, Clinton has helped reframe the abortion debate so as to co-opt the most effective turn in contemporary anti-abortion rhetoric. As documented by Sarah Blustain and Reva Siegel in these pages [see "Mommy Dearest," October 2006], the anti-abortion movement's newest stratagem has been to argue that abortion hurts women, and to flood legislators with letters from grieving post-abortion women. Clinton has worked to defend choice even in that environment by unifying left and right around the shared goal of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies.

If Clinton's attempt to reframe abortion was really about "unifying" left and right, not only do I think this would this make an argument against her for the Democratic leadership -- I would question whether someone that naive should be permitted to walk the streets unsupervised. (Even Will Saletan, who as Garance has noted so devastatingly has made a minor career out of walking blind without a cane around disingenuous pro-life rhetoric, seems to be on to the con.) But I don't think the point of Hillary's gambit was to actually get large numbers of elite members of the forced pregnancy lobby to unite by de-emphasizing regulation and criminalization in order to focus on generous child care and rational birth control and sex ed policies to reduce abortion rates. Rather, I think it was to heighten the "pro-life" contradictions: she understands that given a stark choice between reducing abortion rates and enforcing reactionary sexual mores, most elite American "pro-lifers" will choose the latter. This is a very clever strategy, and one that this pro-choice extremist never had any objections to.

--Scott Lemieux