Wow. I’m pretty disturbed by this thread. One thing off the top:

* I’m biased. My wife works for NARAL, and I’ve spent the last several years phonebanking, canvassing, volunteering and marching along a lot of the folks being maligned in a lot of these posts.

That said, I think there are some points that need to be made…

1. Most importantly, there is *no other group* doing as much in as many places to secure a pro-choice Congress. This race is a whole lot bigger than Lamont/Lieberman… and no other national choice organization has invested anywhere near as much time, money and resources in electing pro-choice candidates like Pederson in Arizona, McNerney in California, Perlmutter in Colorado, Cardin in Maryland and plenty more.

2. NARAL remains committed to Choice. It’s patently ridiculous to say that NARAL has abandoned its committment to Choice.

Just how many folks posting on this thread have been out to South Dakota to fight the abortion ban there? I know plenty of folks who have… and they’re mostly NARAL staffers. These are (mostly) women who face threats and violence morning, noon and night just to try to restore some sanity.

NARAL is also one of the very few Choice groups out there who are advancing a comprehensive pro-active agenda on reproductive rights. Their work over the last few years has been instrumental in outing the radical agenda of the Tony Perkins, Fred Dobson and the Arlington Group crowd on birth control, sex ed and a lot of other issues that the vast majority of Americans agree on.

3. Not my cup of Joe, but he still can do some good.

The Alito vote was a betrayal and the plan b comments inexcusable, but unfortunately — in an anti-choice Senate led by Bill Frist — NARAL doesn’t have the luxury of writing off folks like Lieberman who can help and have helped stop anti-choice amendments to must-pass bills, hold nominees like Hagar the Horrible and Crawford accountable for putting politics over science, and pass some of the only pro-choice legislation in the last Congress. NARAL has to fight for Choice regardless of who controls Congress.

Of course, securing victories in Congress would be a hell of a lot easier in a more Pro-Choice Congress… which is why NARAL is working harder than most of the other groups out there to secure a Pro-Choice Congress and Senate by putting their money, their people and their efforts into winning races.

I certainly understand the dissatisfaction, but if our shared goal is to secure respect for reproductive rights and personal privacy, I really think focusing exclusively on Lamont/Lieberman is counterproductive.

Naral supporting Joe is absurd. You have to do better than some stupid scorecard to justify their support of Lieberman. I’m sorry if you are offended, but you should make it clear that NARAL’s support of Lieberman has cost them the support of progressives. Perhaps some of us can support it again, but like AARP (when they sold out on the Medicare Fraud Bill), I can’t see myself supporting NARAL at all. Sorry, you can use South Dakota as a justification for their existance, but justifying NARAL when they supported the Re-Election of Benedict Lieberman isn’t acceptable. If he was really for Choice, he wouldn’t have voted for Cloture for Scalito. Quite simply, his vote against Alito was a sham and if your wife wants to work for an organization that supports fake pro-choice candidates–well, most here aren’t going to waste money on them. As I said before, we have to move beyond these scorecards that don’t take into account, things like voting for Cloture. Joe’s a Repug or at worst, a Repug Enabler. NARAL shares the same boat, by supporting him.

You postion NARAL as the last defender of Choice, but like South Dakota, they seem to fight only after the damage is done. By enabling the Right Wing, Joe helped fuel the Wing Nut firestorm that helped push South Dakota’s challenge to Roe. If the Wingnuts hadn’t gotten Scalito, they wouldn’t have used this legislation, which was clearly designed to overturn Roe before the Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Scalia, etc Court.

As to countering WingNuts like Dobson, Perkins, Haggard,etc–it seems that they really fell down on this. The only thing that has been effective against these lunatics is themselves and NARAL can’t take credit for that.

As to counting on Lieberman to protect Choice, this is as stupid as Counting on Bush to be honest.

I certainly understand the dissatisfaction, but if our shared goal is to secure respect for reproductive rights and personal privacy, I really think focusing exclusively on Lamont/Lieberman is counterproductive.

Nice strawman.

There are many opportunities for NARAL to make individual choices to advance their cause. One has to wonder why being active in ND cripples NARAL from making THE OBVIOUS CHOICE in CT. Oh right. It doesn’t.

Olympia Snowe and Joementum are good for the fundraising cycle. They are not good for reproductive rights.

Mega-yawn for the concern trolling.

It’s over, done with, NARAL you are dead to me.

Phoenix Woman @ 10:59 am (#37)

Getting rid of Joe Lieberman is like giving us five extra Senators — that’s how much easier it will be for Harry Reid to control the Senate Democratic caucus and enforce message discipline.

Actual control of the Senate is a long shot this year, I think. The Democrats are defending more seats than the Reupublicans by a rather wide margin, so gaining seats is much harder than it should be. My hope is that we at least get a cloture-proof minority. Getting rid of Lieberman, as you observed, would go a long way toward reaching that goal.

Thing is, I wasn’t even talking about control of the full Senate, just the Democratic caucus. Right now, Lieberman makes it all-but-impossible for the Senate Democrats to speak with a united voices on the issues that matter.

NARAL intentionally punted on the filibusters for the anti-choice justices. It intentionally sat out the original anti-choice SoDak legislation campaign and has underfunded and under-organized for tomorrow’s SoDak referendum. I am on their contact list in a liberal state adjoining SoDak (Minnesota, cough) and I already have received 2 invites to NARAL’s December big money annual dinner, but just one letter to donate for SoDak, and exactly zero calls or letters to volunteer for their nonexistent “campaign” there.

Like many formerly “liberal” organizations, NARAL now exists to perpetuate itself, and has no interest in actually winning on its issues. It seems to exist now to guarantee jobs to its employees and fundraisers. Lieberman, Simmons and Johnson are good for NARAL exactly because they are ineffective and unreliable, and thus help preserve the permanent NARAL franchise. Which is why I stopped giving them money, and you should, too. Give directly to pro-choice candidates and cut these weenies out of the action!

To commenter #86 — please thank your wife and her coworkers for me. Without them, we already would have lost Roe v. Wade in a lot more places, not just in the places like my state (Wisconsin) where it doesn’t really exist except in one small area, hundreds of miles from so many women here.

To all commenters who say they no longer are giving or will give to NARAL — there are many ways to support women’s reproductive rights. And many organizations doing good political groundwork. Consider Feminist Majority Foundation, which had a lot to do with the great GOTV effort on campuses in 2004 and will do it again, with your help.

With all the money mentioned here that no longer is going to NARAL, I expect to see the coffers of other organizations overflowing.

NARAL let Liarman and his ilk off the hook on the vote that was its only hope of stopping the Alito confirmation.

South Dakota’s initiative might well have not gained traction if the proponents of that effort didn’t think they had a chance with a newly sympathetic Supreme Court.

I know I speak for many here when I say that we wish we could trust that NARAL truly had the best interests of pro-choice in mind, but some of their recent actions have created serious questions about their strategic thinking.

This is no ideological shift. This bribery and graft at work.

It’s not just NARAL, it’s all over the place. It’s time to start tearing into the massive corruption that is invading so many of our previously progressive institutions; it’s time to challenge them, or destroy them.