The Daily - The Battle for Missouri, Part 2: The Moderate

Episode Date: October 17, 2018

When Democrats lost almost every race in Missouri in 2016, their party decided it needed to do something drastic. But the path they chose may have created an entirely new problem. Guest: 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.

When Democrats lost almost the entire state of Missouri in 2016, the party needed to do something drastic. But what they did may have created an entirely new problem instead. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. You're listening to The Daily. It's Wednesday, October 17th. In yesterday's episode, we heard the story of Joan Barry, a pro-life Democrat from the state of Missouri. Throughout her life, she watched her party lose power in the state. She herself felt excluded by Democrats for her pro-life views.

Her idea was simple. Why not invite pro-life Missourians like her into the party to be more inclusive and to start winning again. So she put that into the party's new platform. And when the vote came in, the answer was yes. Pro-lifers were now welcome in the party. And she was thrilled. And then, oh my gosh.

But within hours. My stomach sank because I was like, what the hell just happened? A furious reaction began. Progressives were pissed. And all hell broke loose. Pamela Merritt is a Democrat and an activist. She used to work at Planned Parenthood. And she was completely caught off guard by Jones' proposal.

She didn't see it coming. At all. Bizarre, regressive, anti-woman language. Progressives like Pamela felt Joan's proposal had betrayed women. And they were angry. They immediately started calling the party. They wrote emails, posted on Facebook.

Pretty much everywhere people were arguing. It created complete and utter chaos. My phone was flooded with people who were horrified and disgusted. The arguments were heated. People were calling the party. People were saying they weren't going to be donors anymore. They were cursing members of the committee.

People were questioning candidates and saying, well, are you going to do something about this? You know, I got a lot of... Meanwhile, Joan had no idea. She's not really on social media. She spent the weekend relaxing at her lake house with her husband and their two dogs. It wasn't until her daughter phoned her that she realized how bad things had gotten.

Mom, your life is in danger. She said, you better get some mace or something. And she said, you wouldn't believe what's happening on Facebook. She told her mom, maybe stay at the lake. Wait to come back. I said, well, I'll tell you what, Karen. You let me know when it's safe to come back to St. Louis, and I'll stay here. I was kidding her, of course. But, oh my gosh, it was horrible. What was said about the amendment, about me.

And I was, you know, I couldn't get over how people were so nasty. They were calling Joan ugly things. It was just, oh gosh, horrible. She was a sellout. I was too old to be in politics. Too old. I better get with it. Just a has-been.

It'd be better if I just left. Call me a... A worthless dinosaur. A dinosaur, that's what he called me. It was just a lot of different things that were said. Having them change their bylaws to welcome pro-life candidates and supporters was a slap in the face. Yeah, I just don't feel like the Democratic Party is going to stick its neck out over this issue.

This is a little too controversial for them. It's so stupid. There's no reason, like, I'm sorry, like, absolutely, there's no reason why. It's just inconceivable to me that the Democratic Party has just kind of shrugged their shoulders about this and been like, well, we can't win this fight. But it's like, absolutely you could. You just like decided that it wasn't even worth starting. Back at the TikTok Tavern, the hipster bar in St. Louis, producer Lindsay Garrison and I talked to lots of progressives who still feel the sting.

I mean, that made me cancel my membership to the state Democratic Party. Yeah, because, you know, the fact it went that far was offensive to me. And it felt pandering. Are they really pro-choice? Are they really thinking about people's reproductive rights? It kind of feels like they're abandoning a lot of us. What do you think about Senator McCaskill? And their Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill.

How has Senator McCaskill been on this issue? I don't know. I think she could say a lot more. Has been, in their view, maddeningly silent on the issue. All the time about many different issues, but especially this one. Claire McCaskill specifically makes me nervous. You know, she's Democratic, but she also doesn't necessarily represent all the voices that fall in that party. I think it's interesting that she kind of gets

offended when people show up at her office asking her what is your stance on abortion what do you think about this because she's like I'm for the people people know that I have always known that but it's just quite obvious that we don't know that or we wouldn't be asking. So how many of you have been to one of my town halls before? Okay, good. McCaskill has a near perfect voting record when it comes to the issue of abortion. has a near perfect voting record when it comes to the issue of abortion. In her more than 30 years in public office in this state, she's learned that the biggest thing she can do to keep her seat and

save abortion is to stay quiet about it, to pivot. This is from Jim Von Baron. And that's why if someone asks her about abortion, she quickly focuses on birth control. There's something we all agree on. We all agree we want to prevent abortions. And guess what? It's not rocket science. You know what it is? It's birth control. That's why if someone asks whether she would ban abortion of fetuses with Down syndrome, she says, personally, that would never be an option I would consider. I think Down syndrome children are joys. I think they are God's gift in many ways in terms of a bright ray of sunshine. That's why when she talks about abortion, she reframes it as a matter of government intrusion.

But I also believe that some decisions the government is not very good at. In fact, the government tries to do a lot more than it should right now. And that's why, when Senator McCaskill announced she would vote no on Judge Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, none of her reasons had anything to do with women or abortion. I opposed Kavanaugh because of his belief that there should be unlimited contributions to campaigns. Instead, she talked about campaign finance and big corporate money.

That's why I voted no. That's the move of a Democrat in a red state, to swerve around these moments like potholes, political career-tanking potholes. The only sure way I know to increase abortions in this country is to not have birth control be affordable and accessible to every woman in this country that wants it. Do you think that she could be in trouble over this issue? They're all going to vote for her.

But the fact is, they annoy her about it and they try to force her further left. Chris Kelly is a retired judge who served for nine terms as a Democratic state representative, several with Claire McCaskill. Do you think that any person could conceivably understand or care more about the Kavanaugh nomination than Claire McCaskill? She gets this stuff. She gets it down to the pet of her stomach. this stuff. She gets it down to the pit of her stomach. The only thing that young pro-choicers should say to Claire McCaskill is, yes, ma'am, thank you, and tell us what to do to help. He thinks progressives in the state are in need of a reality check. They operate in this fantasy that somehow these districts that were going to have a political

renaissance where everyone's going to decide that their ideas, the ideas of the lefties, are now their ideas. There's a reason that Senator McCaskill stays quiet. This is Missouri. It's whiter and older than the country on average. In rural Missouri, the population is never, ever going to perceive itself as leftist. And if, in order to gain the favor of the liberals, engage constantly in leftist rhetoric, you will not win seats, because even though people may agree with you on some of those ideas,

you will scare them away. You will seem alien to them. What did you think, Chris, when you first saw or heard about the inclusiveness pro-life plank being put in the Missouri Democratic Party? Well, I thought that was a smart, rational, political, astute thing to do. And why? Spell that out for me. Because it might help you win some seats and get some votes. And that's what matters. The majority is what matters. Do you think what the pro-choicers are doing in Missouri is wrong?

I think it's tactically foolish. You know, when people feel the most threatened, they dig in, they sometimes become a little bit less pliable. I love the idea of a big tent, but we don't big tent on guns. You know, we don't big tent on health care or those issues. And I reject the premise that somehow abortion is lesser than just because we are threatened. I mean, women's rights are threatened every day. We're now looking at Brett Kavanaugh. We've got all of these different things that we're fighting against. And now we're including this language. Roe is on the line. And the last thing we need is for that language to linger. To me, it was just like the foul stench that needed to be addressed sooner rather than

later. So anything that even has the scent of something that is taking us back blows up. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. After the blowup over Joan's proposal, she was pretty down. She took it hard. All her life, she'd worked for the Democratic Party. She was a good soldier. You know, I am pro-life, but I would put my record on women's rights against anyone. She supported programs for the poor, programs for women.

I passed contraception coverage by insurance companies, which was extremely hard to do. And this is what she got. People wanting her out. She felt that not all Democrats had to agree on all issues. And besides that, the party prides itself on inclusion. Anyone can join. We believe equal treatment under the law for every Missourian, regardless of race, color, age, intellectual or developmental ability, economic status, religion, creed, sex, national origin, ethnicity, veteran, sexual or gender identity. So all those people are allowed in our party, but not pro-life Democrats. She felt really misunderstood.

Being pro-life didn't mean she wanted to take choice away. It didn't mean she wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. We know that most Democratic women and men are pro-choice. That's a given fact. Some people, and some of them are right here in our party, think that it's just a sin to be pro-life. But there are pro-life Democrats too. And that doesn't mean we want to hurt them. You know, I wouldn't want to hurt them, but they just feel like they can just try it all over us. And I, you know, I'm very upset by that. Jones' plank was a tiny fleck, a very small part of this noisy political season.

But it spoke to something much bigger in this nation's political life. How, in our age of extremes, it's impossible to be a little bit of this and a little bit of that, even though that's what most people are. Politics increasingly demands purity, and any deviation turns you into an enemy, something evil, all or nothing.

That's what happened to Joan. She was trying to solve a problem, not create one. But no one really saw it that way. They treated her with contempt, called her a dinosaur. And in some sense, she was. She came from the 1960s, a political age that may have been far more violent. An age when we had profound disagreements over Vietnam, civil rights. But it was an age in which our political institutions

worked. The parties hadn't been purified. You could be a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat. But today that's gone, along with local politics. And in their place are these big national issues, like the question of abortion, the question of Roe v. Wade, the question of Kavanaugh. It's only exacerbated Democrats' difficulties in places like Missouri. It's only made things worse. It's made the middle disappear. It's made the politics of compromise a losing proposition. It's made pro-life Democrats like Joan Barry obsolete. So after all this happened... I was very surprised. I mean, I'll be honest with you, I had no idea that people would be so upset by it. Missouri Democrats had to repair the damage.

Nanda Nunnally-Sparks, who, along with Joan, had been on a listening tour to rebuild the party, empathized with both sides. I reached out to progressives, and then I reached out also to some of the people who voted yes. And in early August, they reconvened. who voted yes. And in early August, they reconvened. At the last meeting, I submitted an amendment to take out the wording that we had added on June 30th and to add in new wording.

They voted on whether to keep Joan's language in or strip it out. So I went to the meeting and I felt I had to go to the meeting. Joan was there, but abstained. Nanda chose to scrap it. We voted overwhelmingly. And Nanda was in the majority. And I thought that it was needed in order to bring unity. Let me just put it that way.

And that was that. Joan's proposal was gone. You know, I hugged Joan afterwards. It was a very hard vote for Joan. And I really, again, I personally, in working with Joan, I do not believe it was her intention to try to use that language as anything divisive or to take away a woman's right to choose. I don't believe that that was her intention at all. At the meeting, Joan made a final statement. What did you say? Well, I have it here if you want to see it, but it's basically that diversity is our strength and inclusion is our strength. She said, quote,

The beliefs and interests in our great state are vast and diverse, with no two individuals holding the same exact opinion. As we convene today, our focus should be on the effort needed to be successful in our goal, election victories. We owe it to the hardworking people of this state to listen to their concerns and offer them solutions. How do we accomplish this when it's apparent we can't do this amongst ourselves? And she ended with this. Let's make sure that the entrance to the Missouri tent is ten times the size of the exit. I'm hopeful that in the future,

people will start to realize that, you know, that we do have pro-life Democrats and they need to be recognized as a part of our party if we're going to be the party we should be. Joan left the meeting feeling incredibly dejected. She told us later, it felt like the final nails in the coffin. I never felt I was unwelcome in the party.

I do feel like it right now. I asked her if she would stay in the party and she said yes. Because she knows there are still people like her in it. People who are open to embracing political differences. And the days after she proposed the change, in the middle of all the blowback, Joan got a message on her answering machine.

It was from her senator, Claire McCaskill. Saying, that was a good thing you did. it was from her senator, Claire McCaskill, saying, that was a good thing you did. And she was glad Joan brought it up. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, new details emerged about connections between the men suspected of killing a Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, and Saudi Arabia's crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

One of the Saudi suspects was a frequent companion of the Crown Prince and has been spotted traveling with him across Europe. Three others have been linked to the Crown Prince's security detail. A fifth suspect holds senior positions inside the Saudi Interior Ministry. Those connections, the Times reports, may undercut the explanation now being offered by Saudi leaders that Khashoggi died in a rogue operation that wasn't authorized by the crown prince, who has denied any involvement in the journalist's disappearance. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

Michael Barbaro will be back tomorrow.