Culture war's all they've got

"Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects the right to an abortion or the funding thereof"

Sorry to get local on you, but that's the proposed amendment to the Tennessee constitution, poised to pass the State Senate on Thursday. Some Democrats are fighting hard, but most have simply tried to add language that would provide exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. As reasonable as that is (it failed), it cedes the fundamental argument, so now instead of talking about whether to amend the constitution, we're talking about how to amend it.

This is exactly the kind of election-year "wedge issue" we have to overcome to build a proper Democratic coalition that will attack economic injustice as its number one priority. Let's face it: God is the trump card, down here especially. Do we need to start spelling out those economic concerns in a religious frame to compete? Would that work?

Local nut-job columnist Tim Chavez predicts that House Speaker Naifeh will be tempted to try to kill the bill in committee, but warns he will have a hard time:

"Naifeh can't now risk being uncovered so prominently for who and what he really serves."

And who/what would that be? What, is Planned Parenthood now a big-contributing money machine? Is there an abortion contracts boondoggle out there ready to line the pockets of the Speaker's friends? Of course not. Naifeh's no saint, but there's only one reason for him to kill this, and I hope he does: because it's a bad idea, aimed at defeating Democrats in November, and eroding the right to abortion that one constitution sure enough does secure. The US Supreme Court says so.