Religious Right -leaning towards Democrats?

From CNN.com:'Raw Politics': Religious right leaning toward Democrats?

'Raw Politics': Religious right leaning toward Democrats?
By Tom Foreman
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- For decades, evangelicals have been seen as solid supporters of the Republican Party. That could be changing.

The religious right, a cornerstone of the so-called Reagan revolution -- the battle over abortion law, and gay marriage -- wants a change.

At least some evangelicals do.

A group of influential Christian leaders are declaring they are tired of divisive politics, tired of watching fights over some issues trump all the good they could be doing.

"Our proposal in [our] manifesto is to join forces with all those who support a civil public square. ... a vision of public life in which people of all faiths -- which, of course, means no faith -- are free to enter and engage public life on the basis of their faith," said evangelical leader Os Guinness.

For Democrats, the timing is good. The party has been pushing to overcome the "faith gap," that many feel has hurt them with church-going voters.

Candidates are appearing in more religious settings, and conversations.

"What I try to do is as best I can be an instrument of His will," Sen. Barack Obama has said.

"I obviously was fortunate to be able to rely on and be grounded in my faith which has been anchor for me throughout my entire life," Sen. Hillary Clinton has said.

Mara Vanderslice of Common Good Strategies is part of that effort.

"I think the biggest thing that we've done wrong is sort of say that we just want a separation of church and state and only speak about religion in terms of separation," Vanderslice said.

Evangelicals are now leading public support for many issues dear to Democrats: global campaigns against AIDS, hunger and poverty. Watch how evangelicals are reaching out »

Even Congressional Democrats can see the power of a partnership, according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Michael Cromartie.

"I think there are genuinely religious people, obviously in the Democratic Party, who've said, you know, 'we need to stop toning down how our faith relates to public policy issues,' whether it's the environment or whether it's questions of the economy or war and peace," he said.

"And we need to start framing our concerns in religious language so that it might appeal to religious believers in America."

Now, this is interesting. A couple of months ago, I posted a link to Politicalinaction.com. The blogger there put forth the premise that the GOP attacks on Obama had little to do with race, but mostly to do with religion. This blogger said that the GOP understands that Obama is the first Democrat in decades, that reeks of being a true Christian, and not just one that babbles about it. That though Obama couldn't get the hard right evangelicals, we should remember that a nice slice of evangelicals left the GOP in 2006 because of all the scandals.

That the YOUNGER evangelicals, especially, are not as rigid as their elders, and that someone like Obama could appeal to them. The supposition was - what would happen to the GOP if Obama was able to KEEP the evangelicals that left them in 2006, and just slice off a little bit more?

Game.Set.Match for the Democrats up and down the line.

I wrote this as a comment in a post down below, and but then went to The Daily Dish, which had a link about young evangelicals, which is why I put this forth in a main post.

Money quotes from the article:

Michael Dudley is the son of a preacher man.

He's a born-again Christian with two family members in the military. He grew up in the Bible Belt, where almost everyone he knew was Republican. But this fall, he's breaking a handful of stereotypes: He plans to vote for Democrat Barack Obama.

"I think a lot of Christians are having trouble getting behind everything the Republicans stand for," said Dudley, 20, a sophomore at Seattle Pacific University.

Dudley's disenchantment with the GOP isn't unique among young, devoutly Christian voters. According to a September 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 15 percent of white evangelicals between 18 and 29, a group traditionally a shoo-in for the GOP, say they no longer identify with the Republican Party. Older evangelicals are also questioning their traditional allegiance, but not at the same rate.
...................................................................

But students at a recent bipartisan political union meeting at SPU say there's something more going on with young Christians than disenchantment with McCain.

In an informal poll of the political union, the majority supported Obama.

"I think it's a new movement starting," said Amy Archibald, 19, a sophomore at the evangelical school. "Most of us would never blindly follow the old Christian Right anymore. James Dobson has nothing to do with us. A lot of us are taking apart the issues, and thinking, 'OK, well, [none of the candidates] fits what I'm looking for exactly.' But if you're going to vote, you've got to take your pros with your cons."

Eugene Cho, a founder and lead pastor at Seattle's Quest Church, which caters to a predominantly under-35 crowd, urges young Christians to look beyond the two or three issues that have allowed Christians to be "manipulated by those that know the game or use it as their sole agenda."

"While the issue of abortion — the sanctity of life — must always be a hugely important issue, we must juxtapose that with other issues that are also very important," Cho wrote in his blog on faith and politics.

Polls have shown that young Christians aren't any less concerned about the "family values" issues that have traditionally driven Christians to the Republican camp. (In fact, a study by the Barna Group, an evangelical polling organization, shows young Christians are actually more conservative on abortion than their elders.) It's just that they're also concerned about issues such as social justice and immigration, issues traditionally associated with Democrats.

Judy Naegeli, 25, who works at a Christian philanthropy, says easy access to information about the world via social-networking sites, YouTube and blogs is the reason her generation is more concerned with social justice.

"It's changed our perspective. ... Each generation chooses their cause, and ours is AIDs in Africa, or poverty or social justice," she said.

You know you read stuff, and you go HMMMMMMM and then sit back and think about it, and it seems to make more sense?

Just like that HuffingtonPost.com's 'Obama bankrupted Clinton in Pennsylvania' premise....

This ' Obama can appeal to the evangelicals' premise is something that I think we need to consider, which is the reason for
a) the Muslim Smears
b) why The Right went apecrazy over Jeremiah Wright
The attempts to marginalize Obama as a Christian.

Just some food for thought.

James Clyburn -Trying to be the Canary in the Mine

Hat tip: Marc Ambinder

James Clyburn, speaking to National Journal:

Later, he explains why he's neutral, sounding very non-neutral and very much of a mind to believe that if the "graybeards" -- the superdelegates -- take the nomination away from Barack Obama, there'll be consequences.

. I'm very proud of what Barack Obama's done. When I sat in those jails back in the '60s in South Carolina -- dreaming about growing up, dreaming about becoming an adult, dreaming about having children and grandchildren -- I now have a 14-year-old grandson, and he is very proud of Barack Obama. I'm not going to sit down and watch anybody marginalize my grandson's dreams and aspirations. And I'm not going to see anybody go out and just absolutely nullify the energy and time that my daughter, youngest daughter, put into Barack Obama's race. This young lady started going to his office at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, every day after work, staying there to 11, 12 o'clock at night, and apologized to me for having to follow her heart for fear that it might disrupt my neutrality.

So when I look at this daughter of mine, I look at this grandson of mine, and see the pride in their faces -- I'm just not going to have anybody just tamping that down, and so that's why I spoke up. Because I'm going home on weekends, and I go to these college campuses, as I will be this weekend -- I'm going to Voorhees [College] and do the commencement there, I'm going to Tuskegee in Alabama and do commencement there on Sunday -- these young people are looking at me, saying, are you graybeards in this party getting ready to go into some room somewhere and nullify everything we did in this campaign?

Clyburn's trying to be the canary in the mine.

Clinton's Race-Baiting Continues

Apparently not satisfied with her plummeting approval ratings among black voters, Hillary Clinton decided to remind us again that our votes don't actually count:

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Hard-working Americans = white Americans. Right. The rest of us sit on our porches eating watermelon and plucking banjos.

For some reason, despite this "broader base" Clinton still seems to be having trouble raising money, and you know, getting more votes than her opponent. But at this point any abstract metric besides votes or delegates that Clinton can use as a rationale for her candidacy becomes the only appropriate one to use.

This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it's meant to give white voters the impression that they would be "disenfranchised" by an Obama win. It's a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama's success.

But the truth is, Clinton won't win the white vote either, as Steve M. points out:

According to CNN's 1996 exit poll, Bill Clinton lost the white vote (Dole 46%, Clinton 43%, Perot 9%). He lost the white male vote by an even larger margin (Dole 49%, Clinton 38%, Perot 11%). And he lost gun owners badly (Dole 51%, Clinton 38%, Perot 10%). However, Clinton won the popular vote overall

In 2000 -- when Al Gore won the popular vote by half a million votes -- he lost white males to Bush by a whopping 60%-36%, according to CNN's exit poll. He lost men overall 53%-42%. He lost whites overall 54%-42%. He lost gun owners 61%-36%. He lost small-town voters 59%-38% and rural voters 59%-37%. He lost the Midwest overall 49%-48%.

I'm not saying these are goals to aspire to. I'm saying it's a myth that Democrats had Joe Sixpack in their back pockets until that snooty arugula-eater Barack Obama came along, and it's a myth that they suffer crushing defeats when bowlers and boilermaker-drinkers aren't on board. 49%-41%-8%, and he won 70% of the electoral votes.

But it's a myth that Clinton needs to perpetuate to make a case for her continued candidacy.

Obama split the male vote with Clinton in Indiana, and came within 4% of her among women, much better than he did in Ohio. Obama increased his share of voters without a college degree, and of white voters in general. He's actually doing better than he was before. While John Judis is right that Obama needs to improve his relationship with white working class voters, Clinton is deliberately hurting his chances of doing so by saying, essentially, "Obama doesn't care about white people."

That's what the "elitist" charge has always been about, appealing to the sentiment that "this black guy thinks he's better than you." It will be the same against the Republicans. The difference is that they now have Democrat saying the same things to further legitimize this line of "argument".

What Indiana might actually shows--and people can either be optimistic or pessimistic about this depending on what you feel like the November campaign would look like, is that Obama does better when the focus is on policy differences rather than race, which is why Clinton is trying to bring it back there. I get the impression Clinton overplayed her hand among working class white voters with the gas tax stupidity, which is why Obama got more of their votes than expected there.

I haven't even mentioned the fact that while Obama has work to do to appeal to that particular block of voters, Clinton has hopelessly alienated >the most loyal base of the Democratic Party: black folks.

Democrats will certainly struggle to win without a substantial minority of white voters, but there's no question that they can't win without us.

The question is this: Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

Obama's relationship with white voters is no where near as bad as Clinton's deteriorating relationship with black voters. But Clinton wants to make this conversation exclusively about the working class white vote, because it hides her glaring weaknesses among other segments of the party.

It's really not just about white people. I know that's really hard for some people to accept, but it's true.

Update: This is Rikyrah. How bad, blatant and obvious is the continued race-baiting of the Clinton Campaign?

When the likes of Mike Barnicle can see it and will acknowledge it, you know it's as obvious as you think it is. Not at all a part of your ' imagination'.
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