The Daily - The Battle for Missouri, Part 1: The Anti-Abortion Democrat

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Weeks before the midterm elections, moderate and progressive Democrats in Missouri are grappling with what the party stands for and who gets to define it. What happens will determine the fate of one of the most endangered Democratic senators in the country. Guest Host: Sabrina Tavernise, a national correspondent who reported this story for The New York Times and “The Daily.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Listen, I worry about everything because everything has to go well in a race like this. This is hard. I'm in a hard state. But I'm not going to change who I am because there are voters that are unhappy with me. I mean, it is what it is. I really do believe the middle is where we get things done. I really do believe that if you aren't willing to compromise, we never accomplish things for Missouri families. So it's who I am.

Weeks before the midterm elections, the Democratic Party is fighting with itself over what the party stands for and who gets to define it. The Democratic Party is fighting with itself over what the party stands for and who gets to define it. And in Missouri, progressives and moderate Democrats are wrestling to establish the party's identity. And what happens with that will determine the fate of one of the most endangered Democrats in the country, Senator Claire McCaskill. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Today's Tuesday, October 16th.

Take the next right onto Flame Tree Drive, then turn left onto Lamp Glow Court. There's too much burning here. It's Flame Tree Drive, Lamp Glow. So Daily producer Lindsay Garrison and I drive to this neighborhood in St. Louis called Tower Grove East. It's kind of like the Brooklyn of St. Louis. We go to this place called the TikTok Tavern. We walk in. There's this long wooden bar, a jukebox, some macrame hanging on the walls.

It's an after-work crowd, and there are all these women, mostly white women, and a couple of men, filling out postcards. Dear Mrs. McCaskill, I was inspired by your dedication to stand up for and assist victims of sex trafficking. They're writing postcards to their senator, Democrat Claire McCaskill. And you need to continue to stand up

for the mental and physical health rights of your community. Please protect our choice. Here's Senator McCaskill. Everything we hold dear. There's really one thing on their minds. We must protect Roe before women and providers are criminalized. And that's the future of abortion access in the state of Missouri. Why are you here today?

I think a woman should be in charge of her own uterus in consultation with her doctor. Nobody else. The idea that women today might not have that option is just beyond, so far beyond me. And women will continue to do what they need to do, only it won't be safe. Bingo. It won't be safe. Does it feel like it could get overturned? Yes.

Yes, if Trump keeps appointing these cramping... Go ahead. These people. In a Missouri, this is a particularly sensitive issue right now. That's because these women, they don't just feel that Claire McCaskill doesn't have their back. They feel that the Democratic Party of the state doesn't have their back. What Democratic Party?

Ooh, I went with it. Do you guys feel the Democratic Party in the state of Missouri has done enough to back abortion access? No. No. Definitely not. I just feel like there isn't that trust. They feel really burned by something that happened this summer. I don't know if you had heard about what had happened the last few weeks, right?

So, um... What happened was this. The Democratic Party of Missouri told Missourians it was okay to be pro-life and be a Democrat. Basically, they invited pro-lifers into the party. It was a slap in the face. In that slap in the face, it came from a woman named Joan Barry. Hi, Joan. I'm Sabrina.

I'm Sabrina. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Hi, this is my colleague, Lindsay. Nice to meet you. So Joan lives in suburban St. Louis in a tidy, classic American home with a front porch and a union sign on her front lawn. Would you like a coffee or soda or something? And she lives there with her husband, Phil. Joan was raised in the St. Louis suburbs, in a Catholic family.

She's in her 70s, and she's been a Democrat her entire life. In fact, she remembers the day she became one. It was when John F. Kennedy came to St. Louis during his campaign for president. Oh, yeah, it was a beautiful day, yeah. They had a makeshift stage on the parking lot, and the whole parking lot was a mass of people. And the message he gave was so dynamic that you couldn't help but be just in awe of him. They say we've never had it so good, and we say we can do better. They say they've never done so much, and I say we can do more.

His words were just, you know, light went on. And of course it didn't hurt that he was pretty good looking too, you know. Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. So from that point on... I think the bug bit me then. She was completely smitten with this idea of the Democratic Party and sacrifice and this young president. And years later, after a long career as a nurse... I thought, you know, there's no nurse in the legislature. I think I'll try it. Joan decided to run for Missouri's House of Representatives.

And luckily I won. So the issues she fought for, education, programs for the poor, labor, they were primarily these big Democratic ideas. She was the main author of this major piece of legislation that forced insurance companies to cover contraception. That was a first in the state. She basically devoted her life to democratic causes. And yet, the thing about Joan Barry is, she's also pro-life.

That's how I saw myself as a person. That might sound unusual today. But back when she first started in politics, it wasn't. It wasn't unusual at all. President, you raise your right hand. You, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear. Missouri has always been at the absolute center of American politics. It's the middle of the country at the center of the political scale. The roots of unions, the buckle of the Bible Belt, it was always known as the bellwether state.

And in fact, it had voted with the winning candidate in every single presidential election since 1904, except for one. Missouri produced these centrist statesmen. I, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear. Really prominent and powerful politicians, like Harry Truman

in the 1940s. I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States Really prominent and powerful politicians, like Harry Truman in the 1940s. Tom Eagleton. He was actually the vice presidential pick for George McGovern in 1972. Dick Gephardt and John Danforth. All of these figures represented a certain type of politics, Missouri-style. Not quite blue, not quite red. It's my pleasure and honor to introduce Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.

Thank you. But then, in 1995, when Bill Clinton was president, something happened that divided Democrats. There was a big debate in Congress over what the anti-abortion movement was calling partial birth abortions. The term partial birth abortion means an abortion in which the person performing the abortion partially, vaginally delivers a living fetus before killing the fetus and completing the delivery. Congress was in the middle of passing a ban on this procedure. There is only one issue at stake here today.

It was a huge fight. That issue is that it is an affront to humanity and to justice to kill a kicking infant with scissors as it emerges from its mother. He was really making Missouri Democrats squirm. As one pro-choice member of the House commented, it undermines the credibility of the pro-choice movement to be defending such an indefensible procedure. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of this bill as a pro-life Democrat,

not only concerned as we're talking about the process of birth today, but the cycle of life for our nation's children. So that was a real moment for Democrats in Missouri. They had to choose. And Missourians were, as always, dead center. And so local Democrats were asking themselves, can I stay with this party? Are these policies things I can defend? There were pro-life Democrats in Missouri like Joan who stayed with the party throughout this chapter. But for others, this was a breaking point. Take a vacuum hose in and suck out the brains. For people like Lou Riggs. And then, you know, take the child out dead. Dr. Mengele on his worst day in a Nazi death camp did not conceive of that.

And it just chilled me to the bone to think I lived in a country where that kind of thing was not only permissible, folks were actually advocating it. So this bill, it actually passed. Both the House and the Senate. But then President Clinton slapped it down. Therefore, I had no choice but to veto the bill. I vetoed it just a few minutes ago before I met with these families. He invited some women to speak about why. I found out when I was seven months pregnant that my daughter was dying. The complications that she had posed severe health risks to me. If I carried to term, he might die in utero, and the resulting toxins could cause a hemorrhage and possibly a hysterectomy.

I found out my son had nine major anomalies, one including no brain. This is not about abortion, and it's not about choice. It's a medical issue. And I am so grateful for President Clinton and his ability to hear our stories. Democrats could no longer be pro-life. They had to pick a side. It was impossible to be in the middle. I just look at that as one of those turning points where the party went off in a particular direction and the rest of us just couldn't do that. So many Democrats, particularly in the rural parts of the state, which is actually most of the state, started to turn Republican.

And folks here felt basically that the party left them. They didn't leave the party. We didn't change core beliefs. Democratic Party, national level, did. In the early 2000s, Lou Riggs left the Democratic Party. And he saw his friends do the same. That was the tradition that I grew up in, politically. But I couldn't do that anymore.

Now he's running for Missouri's fifth district House seat. He's the Republican nominee. Since then, Democrats have been losing their power in the state. And today, Missouri is no longer a bellwether. The days of Harry Truman seem really far away. Now there's not a single Democrat representing any rural district in the entire state. Democrats have lost every single statewide office but one,

including the governor. The last Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, is in danger of losing her seat. Really, there's hardly any Democratic territory left, aside from a few blue dots along I-70. That's the highway that connects Kansas City to St. Louis. Everything else is red. Everything. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. It's 8 o'clock in the East.

Fox News can now project that Republican Donald Trump will win Missouri based on exit polls. He will also win Mississippi. When Donald Trump swept the state in 2016, Joan and her fellow Democrats were shocked. They lost everything. Every single statewide office. It was almost like the party had disappeared in the state. It was a total blowout. And not long after their defeat, Jones' colleagues who ran the Democratic Party, they got together and they just sat there staring at each other. They couldn't believe how badly things had gone. They felt pretty hopeless. They had lost touch with what people wanted.

They needed to do something. Anything. So we decided what we needed to do was to go around the state and talk to people. And so that's what we did. One of the people there was Nanda Nunnally Sparks. And she and Joan and about a dozen others got in their cars and drove all over the state to hear from people what they thought the Missouri Democratic Party should be.

Quite frankly, I'm saddened by the state of affairs in Missouri and quite frankly in our nation right now. The people they were talking to, they brought up everything. What I'm saying is people in rural Missouri, bread and butter issues, the farm issues, gun issues. They wanted to talk about education, agriculture. I think it's economics. About the economy and jobs. Lost a lot of business, manufacturing jobs, higher paying jobs. And people are a little frustrated.

About how Democrats can better organize. Unions are fired up now. They may not have the most money, but they're fired up and down. About how Democrats can better organize. But then Joan remembers something interesting. She says at these meetings, many Democrats brought up something else. They brought up abortion. In every one of those meetings, we had people get up and say, you know, we're going to have to do something that people realize there are pro-life people in the Democratic Party

who are losing votes. She said they were asking, what about us? What about pro-life Democrats? We heard over and over again that that was something that people really, they were interested in. We heard people say, I'm a pro-life Democrat, but I still respect the law. This is the law.

I mean, we heard it over and over and over again. Joan herself felt that the party no longer tolerated views like hers. She too had seen those around her switch parties because they felt like they didn't fit into the Democratic Party anymore. I was at a cocktail party, and this woman came up to me and she said,

oh, Joan, she says, you're running for real life? She said, you've got to get help from Planned Parenthood and NARAL. And I said, Oh, boy, you know, I don't think I would really get help from them. And she said, Oh, well, why not? I said, Well, because I'm pro-life. She looked at me like I had the plague. Like this horrible look on her face, like disgust walked away from me. And that is not the first time that happened.

She thought her party had drifted too far left on abortion. It had developed this hard edge with this activist language. There was a campaign called Shout Your Abortion, basically asking women to stand proud on abortion, wave it like a flag. And that turned off conservative Democrats like Joan. She felt excluded, looked down upon. And that got Joan Berry thinking, what if she wrote pro-life language into the party's platform? What if she could get those moderate voters back?

Now that would be a real contribution. It would mean more people would feel welcome. That's what she thought. And I mean, pro-life Democrats have served in local, state, and national offices and done wonderful jobs. And it's just sad that nowadays they feel like there's no way we could be welcome in that party. And done wonderful jobs on various issues. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. On Democratic issues. Yeah. And I mean, we all love our party. I love what it stands for. That's why I'm a Democrat. They care for the young, the old, the environment, labor, education, health care. I mean, why wouldn't I be a Democrat? But

I don't want to be a second-class citizen in that party. Joan and I had spoken several times about this because I know she also is very a pro-life Democrat and Catholic and very dedicated to the Democratic Party, you know? And so we had talked about it, and she had said, well, I'm going to try to come up with some words. So on June 30th, there was this meeting. It was a meeting of the Democratic State Committee. That's the thing that runs the Democratic Party in the state.

It's dozens of people from all over the state, all elected. Two people from each senatorial district, a man and a woman. One of the items on their agenda was voting on the party platform. Many people spoke. Lots of things were discussed. One of the main things we were doing at that meeting

was to vote on the platform. And then it was Joan's turn. I went ahead with my amendment. She walks up and takes the podium. And then she was Joan's turn. I went ahead with my amendment. She walks up and takes the podium. And then she starts reading her proposal. We respect the conscience of each Missourian and recognize the members of our party who have deeply held and sometimes differing positions on issues of personal conscience, such as abortion. We recognize the diversity of views as a source of strength and welcome

into our ranks all Missourians who may hold differing positions on this issue. Basically, we're pro-choice, our party. But if you're pro-life, come on in. You're welcome to. That's what she was saying. And while she's talking, people are starting to shout, getting really agitated at her suggestions. But she finishes. And then she takes her seat and calls for a voice vote. I was very nervous as the votes were taken. She started hearing no's, lots of no's.

A whole bunch of no's. Oh my gosh. Lots of no's. But then she's hearing a yes, then two, then three, a lot of no's. But then, she's hearing a yes. Then two. Then three. A lot of yeses. As the votes were taken, I'm trying to write them down.

A friend of Joan's makes eye contact with her during the count. And a friend of mine crossed a couple aisles over, you know, went like this, you know. Puts her thumb up at the end. And I actually had the same number tally that she had. She went like this meaning she put her thumb up. Yeah, yeah. It passed. 32 to 25 in favor of her proposal. I just, I couldn't believe it.

Joan drove away from the meeting feeling like she just had the biggest accomplishment in her professional career. It was a way to bring voters back to the Democratic Party. Almost like she had saved an endangered species, these pro-life Democrats. But maybe even the party itself. I tell you what, driving home, I thought, you know what?

I think my whole political career, I can go away from it if I wanted to. And I would feel like I had really accomplished something. That we too are welcome and our tent embraces everybody. Pro-life Democrats were a part of the party. So it worked. This was a vote for the big tent Democratic party that Joan had wanted. And then, oh my gosh, it all fell apart. Mom, she said, you better get some mace or something. And she said, you wouldn't believe what's happening on Facebook. On tomorrow's episode, part two of our story on Missouri Democrats. Here's what else you need to know today. I just spoke with the king of Saudi Arabia,

who denies any knowledge of what took place with regard to, as he said, his Saudi Arabian citizens. I've asked, and he firmly denied that. On Monday, standing outside the White House, President Trump raised denied that. On Monday, standing outside the White House, President Trump raised the possibility that, quote, rogue killers, rather than Saudi Arabia's leaders, were behind the disappearance

of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He didn't really know. Maybe I don't want to get into his mind, but it sounded to me like maybe these could have been rogue killers. Who knows? The Times reports that the president's remarks reflect a new defense emerging from the Saudi government that would protect the Saudi leaders, especially its crown prince,

by blaming a lower-level official inside the country's government. A person briefed on the plan said it involved blaming a Saudi intelligence official, who was authorized by the prince to interrogate Khashoggi, but ended up going too far. Outside the White House, the president was asked if he believed the Saudi king. All I can do is report what he told me, and he told me in a very firm way that they had no knowledge of it. He said it very strongly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.