Two major candidates for President this year; two wildly divergent views on reproductive rights. John McCain has logged a 0% NARAL rating year after year. Barack Obama couldn't be more different, with a consistent 100% rating and a long-standing willingness to let reproductive rights groups counsel him on legislation. With such clear-cut stances, it should be easy to examine how abortion should play as an issue in this election, right? Polling data suggests that voters, especially those in some swing states, are pro-choice in name and on the specific policy positions.
This should mean that on this issue, Obama has a strong advantage. And in a completely rational voting environment, where voters soberly read policy proposals from both candidates and vote the issues, instead of their perceptions and prejudices, that would be the case. But in our voting environment, in which entire elections can be swung by low information voters, or by a narrow base rallied in an country in which a huge percentage of Americans don't even vote, the issues gets a lot more complicated. So who will feel the abortion issue as a bigger albatross around their neck this election season?
As Dante Chinni at Christian Science Monitor notes, most politicians of any professionalism
would love to see the issue just go away. There are, of course,
barnstorming politicians who love the issue because it rallies their
base and makes it easier to avoid accountability for their voting records
on any other issue. But they aren't running for President.
On the national platform, the issue causes nothing but headaches.
That's because the issue is fundamentally about some voters
trying to control other people's sex lives with their votes. When
noses are stuck in the neighbor's panty drawer, well, things get ugly
fast and it's hard to have a rational conversation.
Both candidates have two missions in this election: Appeal to the moderate swing voter and rally the base. From that perspective, Obama has an easier oar to row, because the moderate swing voter that the Christian Science Monitor reports on is pro-choice, as is Obama's base. Both voters can be appealed to with the same message. McCain has a much more difficult task. He has to make the middle believe that he's not as harshly anti-choice as he is, while reassuring the base that he's all but willing to lock up the chastity belts and throw away the keys.
That sort of contradiction seems unsustainable, but he's managed to pull it off so far. The media's nickname for him--"The Maverick"--has the potential to lead voters into thinking that McCain breaks with the conservative line on the abortion issue to embrace common sense. Meanwhile, direct mailings to strongly anti-choice communities set the record straight for the base. As previous elections have shown, direct communication with a right wing base that flies under the radar of the mainstream media can indeed help swing elections. In 2004, ballot initiatives to ban same-sex marriage helped turn out the voters who pushed Bush across the finish line with only a hair's breadth between him and Kerry.
Organizations like NARAL have therefore decided that the best line of attack is to educate moderate voters about McCain's anti-choice stances. McCain's strategy appears to be trying to avoid the issue by pleading ignorance of all ladyparts issues when asked. It's up in the air whether or not he'd plead ignorance if asked if he knew what abortion or the birth control pill even is, and I highly suggest that some intrepid campaign reporter take me up on the implied challenge. (You know, for fun, and for the chance for video you are in to go viral and to get on "The Daily Show.")
Obama should have an easy time on reproductive health issues, but weirdly, it seems that the ugly primary contest between him and Hillary Clinton has left people confused. It's almost as if beating an iconic pro-choice candidate made Obama a little less pro-choice through the properties of sympathetic magic. (Sympathetic magic doesn't register in your NARAL ratings, however.) Some of Clinton's supporters seem wary of his commitment to choice -- when he was caught engaging in a little empty pandering on late term abortions, it blew up into a minor scandal. Obama corrected the record and reassured feminist supporters of his support for medically necessary later term abortions, but it left a group of feminists wary of his real commitment to reproductive rights.
For Obama, ridding himself
of the albatross is simple--he should take the skittishness of Clinton
supporters seriously and give them no cause to think that he's
anything but 1000% on board with abortion rights. He can't afford
to pander to Christian magazines or flirt with politicians who
lamely claim to be pro-choice while giving "I'll pray for you"
condescension to the one in three American women that have or will have to
avail themselves of the right to abortion.
The polling data couldn't be clearer--the pro-choice message appeals
to the middle and to the left.
