Barack's Quandary

This is interesting:

In dealing with Casey Democrats, the national party faces two temptations. One is to ignore them. The party had planned to target voters in more libertarian Mountain West states this fall. But with Arizona Sen. John McCain the presumptive GOP nominee, Democrats are less likely to flip states such as Nevada and Colorado. The second temptation is to assume that Casey Democrats will support the Democratic ticket because Obama has been endorsed by figures such as Sen. Bob Casey Jr., the late Pennsylvania governor's son. But Casey's endorsement failed to prevent Obama's nine-point loss to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary last month.

The bottom line is clear: The party must woo Casey Democrats in Rust Belt and border states -- Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, Missouri, Kentucky. To win them over, it won't be enough for Democrats to hammer the GOP over the economy and the war in Iraq, as Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, did in 2004, or merely to use inclusive language and support partial-birth abortion, as Obama and Clinton have done. Instead, Democrats must address voters' real concerns about protecting families and human life, as Gov. Casey did. "Catholic voters have emerged more pro-life," pollster Greenberg wrote in a 2005 memo, "but they are very responsive to a broad initiative to reduce unwanted pregnancies and the number of abortions."

But this is a real quandary for Barack Obama--he is very pro-abortion--and so are his latte-liberal supporters. He may lose more than he wins with this one, and be viewed as "inauthentic". Early on, he did try to present himself as talking the language of faith--he still uses it in his campaign ads, but in selected states. We haven't seen this kind of literature around here in upscale secular liberal land. And even with the secular group, which would normally give more respect to talk of a faith which stemmed from Obama's church in the black community, the Rev. Wright has ruined that.