Mighty Casey Gets to Bat

One of politics’ best-known urban myths is almost ready for its Bar Mitzvah.

Twelve years and nine months ago, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a devout Catholic and one of the most successful liberal governors of the twentieth century, was refused a speaking slot at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his anti-choice views—or so the story goes. Ergo: national Democrats, rather than Giuliani and Schwarzenegger-embracing Republicans, are the real exclusionists on abortion. Ergo: that’s why Democrats can’t win.

Bill O’Reilly is but the latest TV talker to cry crocodile tears over the Democrats’ alleged intolerance. On June 22 of last year, he condemned the “hypocrites of 1992” for preaching diversity while “at a recent convention…denying the right of…Bob Casey to speak because of his pro-life position.” As the watchdog group Media Matters points out, Hardball’s Chris Matthews has repeated that same story at least five times since 2000. CNN’s Bob Novak and NBC’s Howard Fineman—both, along with Matthews, pillars of Washington’s permanent establishment—also told the tale.

But thanks to the New Republic’s Michael Crowley—and a bit of recent double-checking—we now have one more reason to point and laugh the next time O’Reilly opens his mouth. Nine years ago, Crowley, an actual journalist, boldly decided to do some reporting before broadcasting a conclusion to millions of people. He interviewed almost all the operatives who ran the 1992 convention, and many of the journalists who covered it at the time.

If Bob Casey were denied a speaking slot because he was anti-choice, why weren’t the equally anti-abortion John Breaux, David Boren, Rich Daley, and five other anti-choice governors also prevented from speaking? As Mandy Grunwald, who produced Bill Clinton’s 1992 commercials, told me: “We said all you have to do is endorse our party’s candidate for president, and [Bob Casey] refused, and that was it….There was no abortion litmus-test.”

Today, an anti-choice Bob Casey is again making news. But rather than ask what his party can do for him, Bob Casey Jr. asks what he can do for his party. The former governor’s son is now Pennsylvania’s treasurer, and probably the state’s most popular politician.

An aggressive campaigner for Kerry/Edwards, Casey’s coattails are widely credited with helping to pull the party’s losing presidential ticket to victory in the Keystone State. Seeing Casey’s strength, Sen. Charles E. Schumer ’71, D-N.Y., who chairs the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee, persuaded the pro-lifer to run for the Senate next year against Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Penn.—a formidable, but extremely right-wing incumbent. And in doing so, Schumer muscled aside a fellow pro-choice politician, who also happened to be a well-qualified woman.

Predictably, many of the party’s interests groups howled in protest. “Have we gotten this desperate to win?” a prominent feminist asked.

And the answer is, unequivocally, yes.

As the Republican pollster Bill McInturff likes to note: in 1980, Democrats not only had the presidency, they also held substantial Senate, House, and gubernatorial majorities. They had a majority of literally thousands when all state legislative seats were added together. Forty-nine percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats, only 35 percent as Republicans. The best news Democrats can get today is that they are even on party identification, rather than behind—which is where they are everywhere else.

There are obviously many reasons for the Democrats’ decline—not least the collapse of the once “Solid South,” and a pretty sorry bunch of presidential nominees (including a president who never once sacrificed to serve his party). But often overlooked is the increasingly ideological manner in which the two parties define themselves.

Thousands of pages of political science literature have tracked the trend away from a class-based party system, in which the working and middle class would unite to defend the New Deal and defeat rich Republicans. Even 20 years ago, who would have believed that Democratic candidates can now regularly count on winning Beverly Hills, while Republicans are a lock in Appalachia?

In an information age, issues—rather than wealth or geography—drive our politics. Which leads to a problem: how can parties with increasingly homogenous views possibly attract a majority of the world’s most heterogeneous people?

The solution is to build a diverse party on divisive issues. Democrats should not have to sacrifice their core belief in abortion rights—much as Republicans, since 1976, have never nominated a presidential candidate who supports Roe v. Wade.

But pro-choice Republicans are thriving in New England, the Midwest, and on the West Coast. Savvy GOP leaders recognize that supporting stronger candidates who happen to disagree with their platform on abortion is the means to an even larger victory: majority-status, and policy-making power, for a still fundamentally anti-choice party. And the Patakis and Murkowskis are useful symbols in getting millions of abortion rights supporters to vote against their own interests.

Contrary to the myth, there are hundreds of anti-abortion Democrats in political office today—including the Senate’s Democratic leader. The trouble for Democrats is in the short-sightedness of the Emily’s Lists that sacrifice pro-life Democrats (who, don’t tell anyone, support a pro-choice party) for the pro-life Republicans that can defeat NARAL-approved nominees. They also scare pro-life voters away from the party’s presidential candidates.

Democrats were right to stand up to Bob Casey Sr. 12 years ago because refusing to support the presidential nominee hurts the party. But all Bob Casey Jr. wants to do is help.

Brian M. Goldsmith ’05 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.