On the issues, McCaskill is reasonably strong.  Concerning abortion rights, McCaskill is mostly on the right side of the issue.  Besides having been suckered by the "partial birth abortion ban" (which is not an actual term for any medical procedure and can describe abortions performed even within the first trimester), she's otherwise strong:  she voted against banning Health and Human Services from providing funding for centers that performed abortion, and she's consistently upheld the right of scientists to engage in stem-cell research (though she draws the line at cloning).  In education, Sen. McCaskill seeks to expand pre-school and Head Start programs, as well as expand the Pell Grant program for college students.  She also supports fair trade policies that protect jobs and encourage higher environmental and labor protections in other nations, and she voted against a free trade agreement with Peru. In the realm of healthcare, Sen. McCaskill voted to allow the government to negotiate prices under Medicare Part D, and supported the efforts to expand the SCHIP program to an additional 2-4 million children.  In the realm of foreign policy and national security, she voted in favor of limiting U.S. solider deployments to twelve months, and voted in favor of implementing the 9/11 commission's recommendations.

Her weak issues are primarily centered on immigration.  McCaskill has supported the effort to build a fence along the Mexico border.  She has also opposed the guest worker program, as well as "amnesty."  Since no one has proposed amnesty, I'm taking this to mean she doesn't believe illegals should have a path to citizenship.  McCaskill has also come out in favor of setting English as the official language of the United States of America.  To me this seems a needless issue meant more to court insecure white Americans than to solve any actual problem.  Overall, though, McCaskill is a reasonably loyal Democrat, having voted the party line 85% of the time in 2007.

So what would Sen. McCaskill offer in the way of demographic strengths?  The answer here does not inspire a great deal of confidence.  McCaskill currently maintains only a four point margin between her approval/disapproval numbers in her home state (50% approval to 46% disapproval).  She demonstrates no particular strengths among any demographics.  She splits the white vote (48-48) and the hispanic vote (50-50). While she fares much better among African Americans (among whom she maintains a 69% approval rating), this is unlikely to prove very helpful to Barack Obama who already pulls substantially better numbers among the black population.  Her crossover appeal seems limited; she maintains decent numbers among Democratic voters (66% approval), but polls below fifty among independents, and only gains the approval of 30% of Republican voters.

Moreover, she has failed to bridge the divide between social conservatives and Democrats.  She receives the approval of only 38% of pro-life voters (but 61% of pro-choice voters), and is only approved by 37% of evangelical voters. (Compare these numbers to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland who polls above 50% with both pro-life and pro-choice voters, and at about 57% among both evangelical and non-evangelical voters.)  Finally, Claire McCaskill only took her senate seat by the skin of her teeth, winning by only 49,000 votes out of more than two million cast.  Not the closest of nail-biters, but certainly not indicative of any popular mandate, or (given that her approval rating now is only .4% higher than her original popular vote victory) indicative of future success within the state.

In my view, it looks like Claire McCaskill makes a fine Democratic Senator from a purple state, but it's hard to see her bringing additional energy or charisma to an Obama ticket.  Frankly, the more I read, the more it seems to me that if Obama wants to place a woman on his ticket, he'd be making a grave error to make it anyone other than Hillary Clinton.  Of the prominent female candidates profiled so far, it doesn't seem to me that any of them would bring more to the ticket than a Clinton candidacy would.  Any other female vice-presidential candidate is probably going to come across as pandering and do little to salve the current breach within the party.

Join us later today for our profile of Janet Napolitano (Gov-AZ).