I like Charlie Cook. You're not going to get his opinion on abortion, and if his article seems too technical and too reliant on polls, well, he's a pollster. Elections and polling is what he does.
But he raises an important issue, I think. Whether you are pro-abortion, anti-abortion, apathetic, etc., the Democratic Party needs to address its "stance" on moral issues such as abortion and choice.
Such might be one of the shortcomings of a two-party system, when one party sets itself up as the "yin" on an issue, everybody else inevitably flocks to the "yang" of the opposition. Both parties have "big tents," but seriously, how far could a pro-life Democrat get on the national scene? How far did Tim Roemer get in the DNC Chair's race? Is this an issue the Democrats need to confront, or is it their "moral" obligation to remain pro-choice, pro-abortion....?
http://www.cookpolitical.com/column/2004/022205.php
Turning Down The Volume On Abortion
By Charlie Cook
© NationalJournal.com
February 22, 2005
After each presidential election, the losing party's elected officials and strategists generally develop a consensus on one lesson that they at least intend to apply to future elections. (Whether they pick the right one or not, of course, is often debatable.)
Behind the scenes, there is at least a conversation (if not an actual debate) about what that lesson should be from 2004. More than a few Democrats are suggesting that, just as the party informally decided to downplay the gun issue after their 2000 loss, Dems should now do the same with abortion -- or as Democrats prefer to call it, "the choice issue."
The theory is that if Democrats showcase the issue a bit less, it might help them win downscale, small-town and rural voters who have been defecting from the party with increasing frequency. Yet others warn that the abortion/choice issue has become so ingrained in the Democratic Party doctrine that to suddenly clam up would be seen as politically craven and actually counterproductive.
Democratic pollster Brad Bannon points to the fact that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry won among voters with household incomes between $30,000 and $50,000 a year by only a single percentage point (50 percent to 49 percent), arguing that the traditional Democratic message of economic populism just didn't penetrate with this struggling group of voters, whom he describes as "barely middle class" and who make up just over a fifth of the electorate.
Bannon, who heads Washington-based Bannon Communications Research, says that Democrats should be "running up big numbers, but we haven't." He argues that while these voters support Roe v. Wade, "they have typecast Democrats as the party of abortion on demand and gay marriage. To do better with downscale voters, the Democratic Party needs to emphasize an agenda of economic populism over social issues, suggesting that while there are more conservatives than liberals -- thus Democrats are destined to lose an ideological contest -- there are more populists than elitists, so if Democrats ran campaigns from the bottom to top, rather than from left to right," they would be better off.
The other side of the argument is articulated by another Mark Mellman, who served as a principal pollster for the Kerry campaign. In a memo he prepared for EMILY's List, Mellman argues that "the issue of choice played little role in the election, though to the extent that the issue was engaged, it appears to have been a net positive for Democrats," pointing to data from Gallup, CBS News/New York Times and another Democratic firm, Lake Snell Perry.
Mellman also argues that "moral values" were not a key determinant in 2004, and that this conventional wisdom is an incorrect interpretation of flawed wording in an exit poll question. A majority of Americans remain "pro-choice," he notes, and "values" is a term that is much broader than just the abortion/choice issue. More intriguing, Mellman suggests that "the country is moving from a class-based political alignment to an alignment based on culture."
While Bannon contends that Democrats should better argue economic populism to get back to the old model, Mellman contends that the lines are increasingly drawn between those who have a more traditional cultural stance (who are aligning more with Republicans), and those who are more progressive in terms of cultural values (who are siding with Democrats). Mellman points out that 42 percent of Americans attend church regularly and 43 percent do not, roughly the fault lines in American politics. Finally, Mellman says that "casual observers can confuse correlation with causation," that "cultural progressives tend to be pro-choice, while traditionalists are often anti-choice," but that "there is no evidence that the issue of choice itself caused the cultural alignment or that changing positions on choice would undo the current alignment." Elsewhere, Mellman argues that one might see the same correlation on premarital sex, with progressives taking a more permissive position than traditionalists, but it would be difficult to say that Democrats are losing elections because of their positions or attitudes on the issue.
A third Democratic pollster, Mark Blumenthal of Bennett, Petts & Blumenthal and
www.mysterypollster.com, says that the abortion issue is a "double-edged sword," noting that "there were certainly gains (for Democrats) during the 1990's in non-southern, upscale suburbs" as well as "long-term losses in rural areas." And while he argues that both the gains and losses for Democrats were "about a lot more than abortion, gay rights and gun control," he concedes that these issues did push voters in both directions.
A fourth Democratic pollster weighing in on the debate preferred to go unnamed but suggested that "a party should not have a position on abortion -- it is a personal decision and when a candidate has a personal conviction, our party should not have a litmus test for support. Yes, Democrats lean pro-choice and should, but it is wrong to say that is the only position a candidate can have."
This veteran pollster went on to say that "many urban and suburban voters lean pro-choice, but not militantly," suggesting that these voters abhor extremism in politics from "either side," but they are more concerned with privacy than rural voters. Finally, he argues that "most voters, regardless of their position on abortion, don't want to talk about it."
A fifth Democratic pollster, who also chose be anonymous, pointed to "a cluster of social issues -- abortion, gay rights and gun control -- that animate liberal Democratic activists and, along with opposition to the Iraq War, define 'progressive' politics."
"Tell the Democratic grass-roots to 'stop talking' about choice," this pollster said, and "they hear it is 'abandon your principles' -- that's not about to happen. They [Democratic candidates] won't stop and no Democrat that aspires to national leadership would try to tell [them] to. My advice to clients would be: emphasize the economic and reform issues that get us to a majority -- Social Security, health care, taking on powerful interests, etc., and follow Hillary Clinton's lead on abortion. Her positioning is exactly right [for a pro-choice Democrat]. Stay pro-choice but speak to those in the middle who want abortion to remain legal as it is now, but have strong moral qualms."
This debate is far from over, and the most likely result will not be Democrats "shutting up" about the abortion issue so much as dealing with it in a far more subtle and nuanced way, cognizant of the power of the issue to help among some voters while hurting others.
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