Hobbyhorse
By Atrios provides some interesting data:
Let’s take a look at the 2000 election results for Santorum. He ran against an anti-choice Democrat, Ron Klink, who despite being a fairly bad candidate and having no money only lost 53-46. But, where did he lose?
The 4 suburban Philadelphia counties are critical in PA politics – Bucks, Chester, Montgomery, Delaware. In these counties, Gore won 51-46.
Santorum got 565083 votes in these counties. Klink got 419439. Leaving off the small party votes because I’m too lazy, that makes it about a 57-43 race for Santorum in these counties.
Basically these counties have a lot of middle of the road pro-choice voters. And, in an midterm election you’re going to be asking them to hold their noses and actually go vote for an anti-choice candidate.
If Casey can’t win and inspire large turnout in these counties he really can’t win the election. A contested primary would give him the opportunity to figure out how to appeal to these voters.
Every true believing conservative resident of Pennsyltucky will get out and vote for Santorum. Can Casey inspire voters?
Ah yes, something you never see in claims that the Democrats’ path to glory rests in selling out as many core constituencies as possible: an assessment of the costs. No fair! I thought these discussions were supposed to proceed on the basis that a position supported by a 2-to-1 margin was killing the Democratic Party, while the Republican Party’s position that abortion should be the equivalent of 1st degree murder in all 50 states (The Human Life Amendment remains in the Republican platform) is electoral gold. Atrios just doesn’t understand that there are plenty of strongly pro-life people dying to vote for anybody but Rick Santorum. And pro-choice politics does nothing for the Democrats. New York and California are in the bag anyway–when was the last time these states voted for a fiscally conservative Republican governor?–so we have nothing to lose by doing everything we can to alienate the extremist pro-choice majority. Look, if Michael Lind says that his policy positions are, without exception, the path to electoral victory, it must be true!
Obviously, Casey may be the best choice, and when you’re running against Santorum you can obviously get a lot of leeway. (Casey, at least, is not a DINO, just a decent progressive with a bad position on abortion.) Democrats running in the South and lower Midwest have to do what they have to do; that’s fine. (Running an anti-choice candidate in Rhode Island, however, is unacceptable.) I don’t oppose Harry Reid being the minority leader. I don’t believe that all pro-lifers should be purged from the Democratic Party. But when I hear that all the Democrats need to do is sell out all of their core constituencies and they’ll be in great shape, I’m actually going to need to see evidence (note: imagining large numbers of people who vote Republican because of abortion but who would vote Democratic if people stopped arguing with them does not constitute “evidence.”) We already have a culturally reactionary “left” politician dedicated to building a coalition consisting exclusively of bourgeois white people: Ralph Nader. How’s that working out?