2020: Pro-Life Democrats' Last Stand?

Based on the rhetoric of Democratic leadership, it would seem as if pro-life voices have completely vanished within the Democratic Party.  However, recent developments at the state level have called that conventional wisdom into question.

At the national level, almost every single Democratic member of Congress sympathizes with the pro-choice movement.  That number could dwindle following the 2020 election.  Republicans will surely target Minnesota’s 7^th Congressional District as they seek to take back the House from the clutches of pro-abortion Nancy Pelosi.  Its representative, pro-life Democrat Collin Peterson, has survived re-election battles for nearly three decades; even as his district voted for President Trump with more than 60 percent of the vote in 2016.  His vote share has dropped off in the most recent elections; he won re-election in 2018 by a margin of only four points. As he will have reached the ripe old age of 76 by Election Day 2020, Peterson may finally opt to call it quits.  Such a decision would surely lead to Republicans capturing the seat while at the same time reducing the number of pro-life Democrats in the United States Congress.

In 2018, Illinois Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski barely made it out of his Democratic primary.  Lipinski, a pro-life Democrat who refused to endorse President Obama’s re-election bid in 2012, only captured 52 percent of the vote to his pro-abortion challenger’s 48 percent of the vote.  Unlike Peterson, Lipinski represents a district that voted for Hillary Clinton; although not by that much when compared to other districts in the Chicago area.  Lipinski cruised to re-election last year, as his opponent formerly served as head of the American Nazi Party. It looks like Lipinski has already attracted two challengers from his own party.  Even if the anti-Lipinski share of the vote increases, the presence of two primary challengers could split the anti-Lipinski vote and enable him to win the primary with a plurality.  Several progressive organizations and politicians have already endorsed Marie Newman, Lipinski’s primary challenger in 2018, who has announced her intentions to try to unseat him again next year.  Presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand  and the pro-abortion organizations EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America have all endorsed Newman.  If Lipinski ends up losing his primary, he could probably pull a Joe Lieberman; in other words, run as an independent in the general election and win. Lipinski has consistently outperformed Democratic Presidential candidates in his district, meaning that he has won the trust of many voters who vote Republican in Presidential elections and/or other state and federal elections. 

At the state level, radical pro-abortion bills have gone down in flames in two states that have Democratic legislatures; thanks to opposition from Democrats.  In New Mexico, eight Senate Democrats ended up voting against the bill, which had already passed the House.  It’s not like all of these Democrats have to defend seats in districts that President Trump carried.  Only three of the eight Democrats represent districts that President Trump either carried or came close to carrying, according to The Daily Kos.  In the remainder of the districts, Hillary Clinton received vote shares of between 54 and 66 percent of the vote while President Trump received 34 percent of the vote or less.  A majority of the remaining vote went to Libertarian Presidential candidate and New Mexico native Gary Johnson, who had his strongest performance in the nation in his home state.  At least four of the eight Democratic Senators who voted against the pro-abortion bill reside in New Mexico’s 3^rd Congressional District, which has become an open seat now that its current occupant Ben Ray Lujan has decided to run for the United States Senate.  So far, the list of candidates includes Valerie Plame, an outed former CIA agent and outspoken Trump critic, and State Representative Joseph Sanchez, who voted against the radical abortion bill in the House.  While the aforementioned Senate Democrats’ opposition to the bill does not necessarily indicate support for the pro-life movement in general, it would definitely help to have these kinds of Democrats in Washington to serve as a firewall should the Democrats ever try to pass radical abortion bills at the national level.  As for the possibility that a Republican could carry New Mexico’s 3^rd District, Hillary carried it with nearly 52 percent of the vote in 2016 with President Trump taking 36 percent of the vote and Gary Johnson winning 9 percent. 

In Rhode Island, Harold Metts represents a state Senate district Hillary won with nearly 90 percent of the vote. In spite of his district’s strong preference for the Democrats, he could not bring himself to vote for the “unconscionable” Reproductive Health Care Act, which the House had already approved. Four other members of the nine-member Senate Judiciary Committee, including three Democrats, joined forces with Metts to oppose the bill; meaning that it did not have a chance to move onto the full Senate. 

In other words, it looks like even overwhelmingly Democratic districts can still elect pro-life representatives. With this in mind, New York’s 15^th Congressional District will not have an incumbent running next year.  The district voted for Hillary Clinton by only a slightly larger margin than Harold Metts’s Senate district in Rhode Island.  In other words, Republicans have absolutely no shot at winning the district.  As Nancy Pelosi might say, a “glass of water with a D next to its name” would beat a Republican in that district.

Many Democrats have already announced their intentions to run for the open seat, including former State Senator and current member of the New York City Council Ruben Diaz Sr. Diaz represented a district in the New York State Senate that gave roughly the same share of the vote to Hillary Clinton as the 15^th District.   In a state where pro-abortion liberals dominate the entire party establishment, Diaz had no qualms about expressing his pro-life point of view.  He has most recently drawn the ire of the party establishment by claiming that the “homosexual community” controls the New York City Council. He would definitely have had a point if he said the pro-abortion lobby controls the New York City Council.  Earlier this month, the former Speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn, claimed that “when a woman is pregnant, that is not a human being inside of her.”  Following the 2018 elections, the pro-abortion lobby also controls the entire state government in New York.  The second Democrats regained control of the state Senate, they passed the radical abortion bill known as the “Reproductive Health Act” any many other blue-ish states followed suit; although none have achieved the same success as of yet.

So, the Democratic establishment will surely not line up behind Diaz, even though he describes himself as “the opposite of AOC,” referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; the freshman Democratic Congresswoman who has given the Democratic establishment some headaches.  This brings up an interesting point: despite the fact that the Democratic establishment lined up behind incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley in his primary New York’s 14^th Congressional district. In the 115^th Congress, Crowley served as the Chair of the House Democratic Caucus.  Very few probably predicted that Ocasio-Cortez, a 29-year-old bartender and self-described socialist, would oust the Congressman.  However, she did just that.  In other words, despite their best efforts, the Democratic establishment cannot always guarantee that their preferred candidate makes it over the finish line. 

In addition to his conservative positions on abortion and same-sex marriage that most in his party find abhorrent, Diaz has slammed the “increased tolerance…of marijuana and people ‘urinating in the street, people jumping the turnstile.’” The Daily Kos wrote an article with the headline “One of the worst Democrats in America is seeking one of the bluest seats in America – and he can win.” The article features a quote from a writer for Gothamist  noting that “social conservatism has never been a disqualifier for politicians who want to rise to power in the Bronx” and complains that he referred to New York State as “the abortion capital of the United States.” Based on The Daily Kos’s rhetoric, it seems like the Democratic establishment might view Diaz the same way Republicans viewed the candidacy of Roy Moore and how they initially viewed President Trump.

But the pro-life movement could definitely benefit from having a representative like Diaz in Congress. In order for the ultimate goal of the pro-life movement, a Human Life Amendment, to pass, it would require the support of two-thirds of the members of both houses of Congress and three-fourths of the state legislatures. Mathematically, a Human Life Amendment (or any Constitutional amendment for that matter) would require the support of 67 Senators, 290 members of the House of Representatives, and 38 state legislatures.  While President Trump carried 30 states in the 2016 Presidential Election, Republicans only hold 53 seats in the Senate and probably only about half of the Senate as currently configured would vote for a Human Life Amendment.  While only one Democrat identifies as pro-life, Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins identify as pro-choice. President Trump could improve on his performance by carrying states such as New Hampshire, Maine, Nevada, and/or Minnesota in 2020. Republicans could end up with a two-thirds supermajority in the Senate simply by sweeping every Senate race that takes place in all of those states over the next few election cycles.  However, it would likely take the Democrats implementing a suicidal policy such as the Green New Deal for that to happen.  Besides, it would take the replacement of Collins and Murkowski with pro-life Senators for an actual two-thirds pro-life majority to emerge in the Senate.

A two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives seems even more improbable. Based on the current map of districts nationwide, Republicans would have to sweep all of the districts that Hillary Clinton won with 55 percent of the vote or less in order to reach a two-thrids majority.  Given the incumbency advantage enjoyed by Democrats in many of those districts, the fact that President Trump received less than 40 percent of the vote in many of them, and the possibility that many will become even more Democratic as time goes on, achieving such a majority does not seem likely to emerge anytime soon. 

In other words, the passage of a Human Life Amendment will likely, if not certainly require support of Democrats. Don’t get me wrong. If given a choice between a pro-life Democrat or a pro-life Republican, definitely go with the Republican. Even if a Democratic candidate has the right position on abortion, their positions on all the other issues of the day, including immigration and economics.  However, in some districts, like New York’s 15^th Congressional District, the election of a Republican does not fall into the realm of possibility. For this reason, supporters of the pro-life movement should work to elect pro-life Democrats in deep blue districts; they may end up as critical allies in the civil rights issue of this generation. The results of the 2020 primaries and general election will provide critical insight into whether or not pro-life Democrats have actually become extinct at the national level.  Stay tuned.