By: Michael Hayes

Bob Casey, Jr., is the likely Democratic nominee to oppose Republican Rick Santorum for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania this November. While Casey must still win the Democratic primary on May 16th, he is expected to win that primary because he has the endorsement of state party leaders, including the Governor, more money than the other contenders, and a significant advantage in name recognition. Although Casey benefits from the natural identification with his late father, a passionately pro-family and pro-life governor who was reelected in 1990 by over a million votes, he is a popular statewide figure in his own right. Moreover, Casey’s own pro-life stance and opposition to gun control make it difficult for Santorum to attract the votes of conservative Democrats. Casey currently holds a double-digit lead over Santorum in the polls.

In recent weeks, however, progressive columnists and bloggers have begun to question the wisdom of nominating Casey to oppose Santorum. Casey, like his father, is unequivocally pro-life, which makes him unappealing to pro-choice Democrats who, it should be noted, provide a major source of campaign funds. Perhaps because he is pro-life, Casey recently took a public position in favor of the Alito Supreme Court nomination, saying that the objections raised against Alito were insufficient to warrant a no vote. Although Casey’s support for Alito was both qualified and reluctant, it nevertheless pitted him against Senate Democrats, who overwhelmingly opposed Alito’s nomination.

A Casey win over Santorum in Pennsylvania would be good for the Democratic Party, however. The Democrats desperately need to shed their image as the pro-abortion party. Because this is such a high-profile race, and Casey is so strongly identified as pro-life, a Casey victory would show voters across the country that it is possible to be both a strong Democrat and pro-life.

This would not be false advertising. Public opinion polls show that almost half of rank-and-file Democrats are pro-life. It is only the convention delegates and other party activists who are overwhelmingly pro-choice.

The Democratic Party will never shed its pro-abortion image until its elected officials and party activists begin to reflect the genuine diversity of views on the issue that characterizes its rank-and-file base. For this to happen, pro-life Democrats must force the party to take their views seriously. A Casey victory in Pennsylvania would help a great deal in this regard. Over time, the mobilization of pro-life Democrats by organizations like the Democrats for Life of America will help even more.

The Democrats’ image as a pro-abortion party reflects their failure to behave like a real political party on this issue. American political parties have historically been moderate and inclusive, aggregating a wide variety of interests, offering at least something to almost all groups, and presenting themselves as speaking for all the people rather than for any one narrow interest. In so doing, the parties integrate interest groups into broad coalitions that are necessarily concerned with winning elections. When an interest group is fully integrated into a party’s coalition, it recognizes the need to temper its more extreme goals, subordinating its narrow objectives to the broader interest of the party in winning elections.

The Democratic Party has not required pro-choice groups to temper their objectives in this way. To the contrary, the Democratic platform embraces the unqualified right of women to choose abortion under virtually all circumstances, and all serious aspirants for the Democratic presidential nomination in recent years have found they must commit themselves to this position to have any realistic chance of securing the nomination.

Above all, the intensely partisan nature of the contemporary abortion issue hampers the development of good public policy by taking the abortion issue out of the normal process of bargaining and compromise that characterizes other issues. Where one party is pro-life and the other is pro-choice, there is no arena in which the two contending sides are forced to sit down and work out their differences. Rather, both sides cling to extreme positions, raising the stakes in presidential and congressional elections to unhealthy levels. Thus the nation would be better served on the abortion issue by a Democratic coalition that combined both pro-life and pro-choice elements.

Michael Hayes has been Professor of Political Science at Colgate University since 1984. His most recent book is The Limits of Policy Change, published by Georgetown University Press in 2001.