Sen. Barack Obama hasn't won the Democratic Nomination yet, and if my prayers and the intercession of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, mean anything for Sen. Hillary Clinton, hopefully he won't win at all. I am unconvinced that Obama's rhetoric actually reflects his real views and find that him to be politically such a leftist that I would coin Clinton as a centrist Democrat. But if Obama did win the nomination, there remains the question: who would he choose as a Vice President? The following proposition is very unlikely, but it is an interesting one. There may be something to this political strategy.
Could Casey balance out an Obama ticket?
Right now, the Democratic nomination is Sen. Barack Obama’s to lose — and then, only through an act of superhuman self-sabotage. He will go into the Democratic National Convention in Denver with the most primary votes cast and the most committed delegates; he will need only the blessing of the party’s unelected superdelegates.
Those superdelegates will be extremely reluctant to turn against Obama because of his vote totals, his Midas-like fundraising ability and his enthusiastic supporters. They will also probably want to avoid angering black voters — as reliable a Democratic voting bloc as ever there was.
The general election is another story. The nightmare scenario that many Democratic strategists must be contemplating right about now is the defection of a few hundred thousand white working-class voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Hampshire from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now to Sen. John McCain in the general election.
If that defection happens, McCain will be our next president. Obama had been trying to run as a transformative candidate who could sweep away the old red/blue map, but the old political reality hasn’t changed. This election will likely be fought in five or six key states. If they want to take the White House, Democrats cannot afford to lose the swing states where Clinton edged out Obama.
Obama will therefore want to do something both old-fashioned and audacious in picking his running mate. Old-fashioned: He’ll want to pick someone who can help him carry the must-win state of Pennsylvania. Audacious: That running mate should be Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr.
Casey would be a controversial pick because of his politics and his name. The Pennsylvania senator agrees with his party on most issues, but he is both pro-guns and anti-abortion. He’s the son of the late Gov. Bob Casey, who was famously excluded from speaking at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his anti-abortion views. He was the “Casey” in the Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.Casey Junior is popular in Pennsylvania not in spite of his renegade views but because of them; though, set against the state’s politics, those views don’t look so radical. Pennsylvania has a large enough pro-life, mostly Catholic contingent that, in statewide elections, when both D’s and R’s put up candidates who support abortion rights, the Constitution Party candidate can win a few hundred thousand votes. It’s chock full of exactly the sort of economically progressive, socially conservative voters Democrats would love to win back.
With the help of Casey’s endorsement, Obama had been making inroads with those voters. Then the God and guns gaffe ruined his chance to force Clinton out early and opened a huge chasm between the politician and the people. It’s no longer just an issue of policy that divides them but one of trust, as well.
Religious blue-collar Democrats suspect that Obama’s empathy for them is all an act. The best — in fact, probably the only — way to convince them otherwise is to put someone whom they respect on the ticket. The person who can best do that is Casey.
Critics can carp that this will cost votes and money, but that’s at least half wrong. Evans-Novak Political Report’s Timothy P. Carney argues that politicians tend to break against abortion rights for the votes or in support of them for the campaign donations. However, Obama’s campaign is already receiving more funds than it knows what to do with. What are those folks worried about — that he’ll raise only $35 million a month?
As for the votes, many Democrats who support abortion rights cautioned Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) against recruiting Casey to run for Senate in 2006. The pro-abortion-rights Schumer brushed off these criticisms because he figured Casey agreed with the party on enough issues and because he wanted to win back the Senate. Look how
that turned out.
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