Pro-Choicers Could Swing the Election

Posted by Booman at 1:55 AM on June 18, 2008.

Via Taegan Goddard:

A new Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll commissioned by NARAL finds that once "balanced information" about Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain's respective positions on abortion are introduced, Obama gains 6 points nationally, with his lead in battleground states expanding from a net 2 points (47% to 45%) to a net 13 points (53% to 40%).

Other key finding: "Despite the fact that the national focus seems to be on the economy, among pro-choice Independent women, pro-choice Republican women, and liberal to moderate Republican women, the issue of abortion produces a larger advantage for Democrats than the economy, the war in Iraq, or health care."

For a long time I've thought that McCain's only chance to get a bang for his buck out of his vice-presidential pick is for him to select a pro-choice running mate. Robert Novak mentioned two pro-choice possibilities in a recent Townhall piece:

Sources close to Sen. John McCain say the Republican presidential candidate likes the idea of Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman, re-elected from Connecticut as an independent in 2006, or former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge -- if he could get away with it. The political consensus is that McCain couldn't get away with either, and he knows it.

I really don't understand why he can't get away with it. As the polling at the top shows, McCain has a serious liability in his extreme anti-choice voting record. The Republican base has shrunk to such a small rump that McCain is losing national polls even though he runs stronger with self-identified Republicans than Obama does with self-identified Democrats. McCain's natural constituency simply is not the same as George W. Bush's. McCain has a much better chance of winning New Hampshire, Connecticut, and New Jersey than he does of winning Minnesota, Iowa, and Oregon. He has to expand his map somewhere, but he can't attract northeastern voters by picking some southern anti-choice governor. He'd get more bang for his buck out of picking Olympia Snowe, Christie Todd Whitman, Jodi Rell, Tom Ridge, or George Pataki than he'd get out of Haley Barbour or Mark Sanford. At least, I t

Tagged as: obama, mccain, republican, women, vote, abortion, pro-choice

Lindsay Beyerstein a New York writer blogging at Majikthise.