Casey as Veep

Matt is of course right that Bob Casey would be an extremely poor choice to join the Obama ticket. Going with a proponent of criminalizing abortion would be bad on the merits, bad politics, and especially bad considering the need to bring supporters of the Democratic runner-up back into the fold. (I would be especially interested in hearing Scheiber explain how this slap in women’s faces would be good for party unity.) Besides that, Casey is a notably non-dynamic speaker whose name recognition wouldn’t mean much outside of Pennsylvania, and it would also mean vacating a Senate seat the Dems wouldn’t be guaranteed to hold.

Remarkably, after Giuliani’s historic flameout, I don’t recall countless media stories about how the GOP is in deep trouble if they don’t broaden their tent and consider running someone who’s pro-choice. Indeed, let me know if I missed something but as far as I can tell the number of pundits making this argument was “zero,” although people are still whining and moaning about poor Bob Casey not speaking to the Democratic convention in 1992 even though he refused to endorse Clinton 15 years later. And this double standard exists although the Democratic Party actually represents the majority position on reproductive freedom. Why, it’s almost as if these arguments are about indifference and/or hostility to women’s reproductive rights rather than being about politics…