Consider the relative stakes. There are any number of “health” procedures that, while their benefits might seem obvious to those who stand immediately to benefit from them, are nevertheless banned or heavily restricted in this country for any number of reasons. If one really believes that terming a pregnancy is nothing but a sensible decision sometimes made by women in consultation with qualified medical personnel as opposed to the cult of child murder carried on by an organization founded by a well-known racist eugenicist, the proper attitude towards it is not the unilateralism of the Democrats but one of pragmatism and compromise. If, on the other hand, you think abortion really is murder, considering it the single most important issue facing this country, with no remotely close competitors, this unilateralism is entirely understandable.

If the Democrats were willing to run credible candidates who could speak to the manifold ways in which the Republican agenda is actively hostile to the interests of working people, especially in the Midwest and the South, while affirming even modest anti-abortion views, they would win again and again. Exit polling from 2016 showed that virtually no one in this country believes in both libertarian economics and social conservatism. The huge mass of voters who want all of us, from the elderly who have spent their entire lives expecting to receive benefits from Social Security and Medicare to those still in their mothers’ wombs, to be treated with dignity are theirs for the taking.