Adam Nagourney has a column in the New York Times (free subscription) in which he quotes a number of leading Democrats offering thoughts on where the Party needs to go on the issue of abortion. Some of the quotes are revealing. Others are amusing, and some are just incoherent.
"All these issues that put us into the extreme and not the mainstream really hurt us with the heartland of the country," said Donna Brazile, a Democratic Party leader who managed Al Gore's campaign in 2000. "Even I have trouble explaining to my family that we are not about killing babies."
So, a liberal Democrat is acknowledging that being pro-choice on abortion and in favor of gay marriage are extremist positions. And here we had been given to believe during the campaign that the traditionalists were the extremists.
"If somebody is willing to stick with us who is pro-life, that means they are the right kind of pro-life person," said Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont. "What I don't want to do is to have a national message that makes it impossible for you to be a conservative, or to be a progressive who can't win."
The right kind of pro-life person for Dr. Dean is one who goes along with the Democrats' position that there should be no restrictions on a woman's right to have an abortion. In other words, the right kind of pro-lifer is really a pro-choicer.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said Republicans had "been successful at painting the view of the pro-choice movement as abortion on demand - and nothing can be farther from the truth."
This is a simply breathtaking statement. If the signature conviction of the pro-choice movement is no longer that abortion should be available to anyone who wants one at any time in a woman's pregnancy, then when did they change? Pro-choicers are unshakably committed to Roe v. Wade which protects exactly this legal right. Why are they?
"I think it's a big mistake for Democrats to think they can win politically by moving away from a pro-choice stand," said Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America. "It's time for Democrats to stop playing the defensive role on this issue and of doing a better job of showing how extreme the other side really is."
Ms Keenan needs to check with Ms Brazille about who the extremists are on this issue.
Gloria Feldt, the president of Planned Parenthood, said Democrats "need to stop allowing the extreme, anti-choice right wing of the Republican Party to paint them into a corner where all they talk about is abortion. We have the high ground here if we focus our policy and our discussion on the prevention of unintended pregnancies."
In other words, let's change the subject so that no one sees how incoherent we are on the issue of abortion.
"We let the Republicans define us as the abortion any time, anywhere party," said Gordon Fischer, the departing Democratic chairman of Iowa, a state where Mr. Kerry suffered one of his more frustrating losses to President Bush. "The Republicans get by as targeting us as the doctrinaire party, when they are the doctrinaire party."
So there! You are! No, you are!
Mr. Wolfson said that if Mr. Bush tried to replace a justice who supports Roe v. Wade with one who opposes it, than an all-out battle would begin. But he and other Democrats said that would not necessarily be the case if the president sought to replace one justice who opposes Roe v. Wade with another.
Mr. Wolfson needs to confer with Sen. Feinstein. Repeat ten times: Democrats are not the party of abortion on demand and to say that they are couldn't be further from the truth.
This emerging debate is the latest fallout from Mr. Kerry's loss as Democrats argue the reasons for his defeat. In doing so, the party is struggling to balance the views of its most loyal members with the need to block Republicans from broadening their appeal through cultural issues.
Or, more simply, if the rank and file Democrats really knew where both parties stood on the main cultural issues of our time they would abandon the Democratic party in droves.