Dana's excellent reporting on the mailer and robocall wars between the
Clinton and
Obama campaigns over Obama’s “present” votes on some abortion questions in the Illinois state senate brought to mind a lesson in political tactics that I picked up during my five months on
Bill Bradley's presidential campaign eight years ago. At about this same stage of the campaign, Bradley, looking for an edge, began pointing out that Vice President
Al Gore had been anti-choice earlier in his career -- which he had been, yet insisted on denying.It backfired. The pro-choice movement quickly
turned against Bradley, and NARAL endorsed Gore:
“We reject attempts to use this issue as a political wedge to divide pro-choice voters," [NARAL] President Kate Michelman said. "We are unhappy and very disappointed that the Bradley campaign is using it in this fashion.""NARAL doesn't take issue with Bradley's position on abortion. "It's his tactics that are unacceptable," Michelman said.
As I understood it at the time, the pro-choice groups’ logic was that if someone was reliably pro-choice in the present, they must absolutely never be criticized for having been shaky on the issue in the past. Because what would be the incentive to convert, if you would still be attacked for the earlier position? The idea of aggressively protecting and rewarding those who came around to your view seemed like a remarkably savvy political tactic, especially compared to interest groups whose idea of influence was limited to trying to punish their opponents, and reward only their most absolutely reliable friends.But this raises the question: Will NARAL (post-Michelman) and the other groups take a similar view of Senator Clinton’s “attempts to use this issue as a political wedge to divide pro-choice voters”? The situation isn’t quite the same, as Obama is not a convert, but the logic is similar: What would be the incentive to
cooperate with the choice groups in a strategy of using “present” votes to protect other legislators, if you’re going to be attacked for it?I suspect, though, that the 2000 rules were like
Bush v. Gore, and have no value as precedent.
-- Mark Schmitt 
