The New Democratic Party Platform - Are They Bitter Or Do They Just Like Losing Elections?

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/08/09/democrats-debate-party-platform/

The dems restructured their party platform to set themselves further away from the majority opinion on two of my favorite domestic issues - guns and abortion.

On the guns side the dems promised to give the assault weapons ban another go - while I admit naming it the "assault weapons ban" did buy them some traction in the past the bill is widely (rightly, in my opinion) viewed as a failure and with the power and popularity gun groups the AWB is dead for good. All this will do is make things hard on western democrats who have (in many cases successfully) been working to changing the image of the democratic party as anti-gun.

On the abortion front the dems removed the "rare" from the "safe, legal and rare" bit. What idiots! What ground will this possibly gain you? Will planned parenthood write the DNC a slightly bigger check this year? The opinion of the country has shifted toward a generally pro-life stance. In areas like late-term abortion and the use of abortion as birth-control the nation is solidly opposed. Even people who don't want Roe v. Wade overturned say it would be nice to see fewer abortions every year. The democrats have increasing numbers of pro-life politicians - look at Senator Casey out of PA.

Why would a party go about alienating America like this? There is no benefit here - people who want to ban guns and the few strange people who think we should aim for more abortions in this country already support the democratic party. What the hell are these people thinking? With fumbles like this I am feeling more and more optimistic about the republicans in the fall.