Describing why some white blue-collar rural voters in states like Pennsylvania might hestitate to support Obama or have faith in the Federal Government, spoken at a SF fundraiser, first published on the Huffington Post blog, April 2008:
"It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
- Barack Obama
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Obama targeting Evangelical voters, from NPR, August 2008:
"When working as a community organizer with other churches, helping to build struggling neighborhoods, I let Jesus Christ into my life. I learned that my sins could be redeemed," Obama said.
"Their efforts to show Obama to be a religious man are not subtle," said Steve Waldman, the founder and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, a Web site dedicated to spirituality. Waldman said Obama's emphasis on faith is even more aggressive than that of President Bush, but that it's not entirely aimed at religious voters.
"If Obama can show himself to be a person of faith, it also helps him combat the idea that he's an elitist, that he's not a mainstream American. Because if he shows that he prays and he's a churchgoing guy and he's a religious guy, that's a very mainstream characteristic," Waldman said.
The irony of a liberal Democrat showcasing his faith is not lost on Gary Bauer, a leading conservative religious activist. "Let me just point out all the things that, when Republicans do them, your colleagues in the media are all over them for exploiting religion, and yet when Obama does it, it's considered refreshing, and he's competitive," Bauer said.
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I find this sort of pandering to a specific voter demographic, whether religious or otherwise, to be contrary to Obama's message of unity and universal inclusion. How about the Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Quakers, Mormons, Atheists, Santerians, etc.? All American votes count and all are equal, right? Where is the talk of securing 70% of the Sunni or Agnostic vote? I know previous Democrats have shied away from discussing religion and their personal faith (maybe to their political peril), and Obama is one of those "special" candidates who doesn't easily fit a political mold. But in comparison, religion plays a much smaller role in McCain's campaign. Yes it's true that if Obama manages to secure at least 25-30% of the white Evangelical vote, he will pretty much lock up the election. McCain only has 60% of their votes, versus George W. Bush's >70% in 2004. And even if this recent "faith offensive" is not totally aimed at religious voters, but instead meant to dispel misperceptions that Obama is elitist (and/or Muslim), it's pretty darn sad for Obama and America if he has to engage in such public displays of Christianity to convince people he's "one of them".
One of the few things I like about the Democratic Party is they don't shove religion down your throat, and don't consider it a prerequisite to being American. Maybe it's because they're too "politically correct" and fear offending people, as Obama said in his celebrated speech on religion and politics in June. But I also think it comes from a sense of humility, respect for personal privacy, and maybe the realization that religion won't solve or even help with many pressing matters of government, so why bother opening such a dogmatic, divisive Pandora's Box? Many progressives endorse a woman's right to choose (not pro-abortion, but legally permitting the procedure if a person decides to) and same sex unions (more Americans committing to relationships with each other and strengthening the family/home can only do our country good). Yes some "anti-religion" Dems go overboard with removing religious content in public spaces, but many Dems who are religious tend to keep it to themselves. Religion (especially Protestant Christianity, of which Evangelicals belong) is inherently a private relationship between a person and his/her creator, and doesn't have to be publicized and institutionalized. Sure your preacher acts as the intermediary between you and your maker, and you may enjoy worshipping in the context of a congregation. But for Obama to get up on his "pulpit" and often spout scripture like he was Reverend MLK Jr. concerns me, especially because he didn't before the Iowa Caucuses. I suppose the feedback he's getting from advisors and the public is that it's working. The Washington Post's E. J. Dionne said that Obama's speech on religion and politics in June in was the greatest by a Democrat since JFK. But maybe a problem with American politics is that we inject religion much more than anyone else in the developed world. We don't have to be "secularism Nazis" like the Turks, but I think it would help the political discourse and electoral process to tone it down a notch.
Obama grew up without religion in his life, and may have joined Trinity Church in Chicago for its social-political connections, according to The New Yorker. As a community organizer, he only targeted South Side churches because those were the easiest conduits by which to contact and mobilize local black voters. He wasn't "drawn" to church by faith alone. So maybe his god did touch him, and now he is a real believer and agent of his will. Kudos to him. That has NOTHING to do with the job of President of the USA, except for being an attractive addition to your resume when you court skeptical Christian voters. His explicit displays of religion are also peculiar, especially considering his statment above about rural whites. Not long ago in April, he made the argument (if I'm interpreting it correctly) that rural whites are frustrated from decades of decline and being ignored by Washington. They feel the government has failed them with countless unmet promises of better jobs returning, so they are bitter and blame global trade, immigrants, and others not like them for their predicament. They also "cling to guns or religion" as a way of coping with their situations. So in essence, Obama was saying that rural whites (many of them are Evangelicals) medicate themselves with their religion, yet now he is invoking those same sentiments to profess his kinship with them. He implicitly mocked rural whites for using Jesus to make them feel better about their problems (which doesn't really solve anything or address the root causes of their economic situations), but now he is saying that he draws his strength from Jesus, and is inspired by him to try to help those same people.
However, those voters may not be easily won over. On his website, Obama clearly states that he supports a woman's right to choose, access to birth control, and stem cell research, which may be at odds with many Evangelicals. For same sex unions, his positions are less clearly defined. He has said several times that marriage should be between a man and a woman, though he does support same-sex civil unions and equality under the law. He also denounced the "discriminatory" proposition in the CA ballot to amend the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage, of which McCain supports. But just by being a Democrat, I don't know if the "defense of marriage" Evangelicals will hear him out. Though clearly many Christians take more into account than just their religious views when they vote ("It's the economy, stupid!").
So I guess it's ok to do whatever it takes to win, even speaking from both sides of your mouth. That's not much "change" from the Washington status quo. In addition, Obama first vowed to take public campaign financing if McCain followed suit (after all, he is above all that lobbyist influence and special-interest money, right?). Deep in financial trouble at the time, McCain went public, but Obama changed his mind because he knew he could raise more money privately (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/TheNote/story?id=5201819&page=1). The Obama and McCain camps supposedly agreed to a series of debates prior to the 3 official presidential debates, but depending on who you ask, either Obama or McCain reneged on that commitment too (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080802/ap_on_el_pr/presidential_debates). Obama also used to denounce immunity for telecoms who helped Bush spy on Americans without warrants, but ended up voting for the FISA bill in the end, much to the chargrin of many liberal supporters (http://news.yahoo.com/s/cnet/20080702/tc_cnet/830110784399828987). I know McCain has done his share of "flip-flopping" too, and has said some really stupid things about energy policy just to score PR points with cash-strapped voters (he thinks that expanded US drilling will actually make gas fall below $4/gallon, but by the time we tap those new fields, gas may be $6!).
But I expected "The One" to hold himself to higher standards.
Election 2008: Issues
Evangelicals Up For Grabs? Candidates Court Voters
by Mara Liasson
Listen Now [7 min 45 sec] add to playlist
"We believe that more Americans of faith, including evangelicals and modern mainline Protestants and modern conservative Catholics, will give Senator Obama a hard look."
Joshua DuBois, director of religious affairs for Obama campaign
Morning Edition, August 7, 2008 · On Aug. 16, Barack Obama and John McCain will appear together at Rick Warren's Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, Calif. Joint appearances by the presumed nominees of the major parties are rare, and this one shows that both parties are working hard to court the votes of white evangelical Christians.
This year, there's been a role reversal in the competition for those voters. Now, it's the Democrat who is comfortable quoting Scripture and talking openly about his beliefs. "When working as a community organizer with other churches, helping to build struggling neighborhoods, I let Jesus Christ into my life. I learned that my sins could be redeemed," Obama said.
John McCain is more reluctant to talk about his own faith. And he has had rocky relations with religious conservatives. But McCain is a believer, and he has a powerful story about the time his own faith was tested — when he was being tortured as a prisoner of war. One Christmas morning, he was allowed out of his cell for a few moments. As he stood alone in the prison courtyard, one of the Vietnamese guards — who had shown some small kindness to McCain in the past — walked up to him. "Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt," McCain said. "We stood wordlessly there for a minute or two, venerating the cross, until the guard rubbed it out and walked away. To me, that was faith: a faith that unites and never divides, a faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. It is the faith that we are all equal and endowed by our creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is the faith I would die to defend."
'Mainstream' Man Of Faith
That story is often about all the Arizona senator will say about his faith, much to the chagrin of his evangelical supporters. Obama, however, is making an all-out push to court religious voters. The Illinois senator has promised to expand President Bush's faith-based initiative. During the primaries, the senator distributed leaflets with headings like "Committed Christian" and "Called to Christ."
"Their efforts to show Obama to be a religious man are not subtle," said Steve Waldman, the founder and editor-in-chief of Beliefnet, a Web site dedicated to spirituality. Waldman said Obama's emphasis on faith is even more aggressive than that of President Bush, but that it's not entirely aimed at religious voters.
"If Obama can show himself to be a person of faith, it also helps him combat the idea that he's an elitist, that he's not a mainstream American. Because if he shows that he prays and he's a churchgoing guy and he's a religious guy, that's a very mainstream characteristic," Waldman said.
The irony of a liberal Democrat showcasing his faith is not lost on Gary Bauer, a leading conservative religious activist. "Let me just point out all the things that, when Republicans do them, your colleagues in the media are all over them for exploiting religion, and yet when Obama does it, it's considered refreshing, and he's competitive," Bauer said.
A Volatile Mix
Religion and politics can be a combustible mix. For McCain, it has sometimes been an exploding cigar. This year, McCain accepted the endorsement of fundamentalist pastors Rod Parsley and John Hagee. But McCain had to reject their endorsements after it was discovered that Parsley had called Islam evil, and after Hagee said the Holocaust was part of God's plan for the Jews. "I didn't attend their church for 20 years, and I'm not a member of their church. I received their endorsement, which did not mean that I endorsed their views. But the comments made most recently by Pastor Hagee are just too much," McCain said in a statement at the time.
In that statement, McCain was reminding voters about the 20 years Obama spent in a Chicago church led by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose many controversial remarks included accusations that the government created the AIDS epidemic to kill blacks. Obama had to cut his ties to Wright, saying the minister's comments "were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate."
Closing The Gap
The Wright episode planted seeds of doubt about Obama in the minds of many voters, and the rejection of Hagee and Parsley reopened the old wounds between McCain and evangelicals. But Richard Land, a Southern Baptist leader, says McCain still has a good chance with those voters. "What I hear a lot from Southern Baptist pastors and lay people ... is a variation of this sort of theme: 'John McCain was not my first choice, John McCain was not my second choice, but I'll take a third class fireman over a first class arsonist.' And when it comes to the issue of life, when it comes to the issue of marriage, they perceive Barack Obama as a first class arsonist," Land said.
Land thinks that, in the end, evangelicals will vote for McCain. But Bauer worries about something else: McCain needs a committed army of volunteers — the kind President Bush found in the evangelical community four years ago. Bauer said he sends out an e-mail to a quarter-million Christian activists every day.
"I've noticed in the feedback from my own daily reports, that if I go back three months ago, there was a large number of people saying, 'Gary, there's just no way I can do this.' And now people are saying, 'We've got to elect him,' and 'How do I volunteer?' So that gap is going to close, too. But whether it closes quickly enough over the next hundred days remains to be seen," Bauer said.
A 'Humble' Outreach
In 2004, President Bush got 78 percent of the evangelical vote. John Kerry got only 22 percent. Right now, Waldman said, polls show McCain has about 60 percent — about 10 points behind where Bush was at this point in 2004; Obama has about 25 percent, a little better than where Kerry ended up. "What the polls are showing in terms of evangelicals is that John McCain has lost a bunch of them compared to George Bush, but that Barack Obama has not yet gotten them. … He has an opportunity that Democrats haven't had in a long time, but he has not yet succeeded in bringing them over," Waldman said.
At least some of these voters are up for grabs. And in the next few weeks, Obama will be stepping up his efforts to get them. He'll launch a new outreach project aimed at younger evangelicals with community service projects, house parties and Christian rock concerts. "We're pretty humble in this outreach. We certainly don't plan on winning outright the evangelical vote … but we do believe that more Americans of faith, including evangelicals and modern mainline Protestants and modern conservative Catholics, will give Senator Obama a hard look and will end up supporting him," said Joshua DuBois, Obama's national director of religious affairs.
No one expects Obama to even get half the evangelical vote. But just breaking 30 percent would be a kind of miracle for a Democrat. The last Democrat to do so was Bill Clinton, a Southern Baptist who got 32 percent of the white evangelical vote. It may not be a coincidence that he was also the last Democrat elected president.
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