Religious Right To Go Democratic
Filed under: 2008 elections — Michael van der Galien, Editor-in-Chief on May 12, 2008 @ 12:38 pm CEST
It seems that quite some members of the s0-called religious right are thinking about joining forces with the Democrats. The Democrats have, in recent years and especially in the recent campaign, presented themselves as a religious alternative to the perceived religiosity of the Republican Party. This in an attempt to convince religious voters to vote Democrats and to close the Church-gap.
It appears that the attempt is paying off. Some leaders of the religious right indicate that they want to spend less time talking about ‘divisive issues’ and more time on, quite simply, ‘doing good works.’ One wonders why it is that these people seem to think that doing good works is less disicive then, say, abortion. After all, some may consider it a sacred duty to help the poor out financially by taking money away from the rich and giving it to the poor, whereas others may have a completely different view (for instance that the government should not take it but that people ’should’ give it freely to charity).
That having been said, one gets the impression that Democrats and the religious right, some parts of it at least, are slowly reaching out towards each other. Democrats are doing what they did not do for a long time: they talk about religion and about the role their faith plays in the lives.
One strategist basically argued that in the, Democrats constantly focused on the ’separation’ part of ’separation of church and state,’ whereas nowadays they try to focus a bit more on the ‘church part’ by showing or arguing at least that their political views are often also shaped by their religious views.
Although religious voters seem to be opening up more to the Democratic Party, Democrats have to do more than talk the talk if they want Church-vote. They have go to change some things. One of the main things is, of course, abortion. Democrats should be less dogmatic about this issue, less stubborn, and more tolerant of dissenting views and propose more moderate laws.
That sounds easy, but it’s not for them. That may very well anger the liberal, especially the feminist, base.
Difficult, but interesting to watch in the coming months and years.
1 C Stanley
May 12, 2008 @ 2:04 pm CESTSeems like this has the potential to either help or hurt the Democrats. If they really want to capitalize on the shift, they’ll end up having to pander to certain influential evangelical leaders as the GOP has done. But then they can’t simultaneously do that and criticize McCain for his Hagee endorsement or for softening his previous denouncement of the religious right. To some extent, the Dems are going to have to calculate which is the better scenario for them- to be vocally critical of the influence of the religious right or to soften their own stance. Of course what remains ludicrous is the degree to which many on the left openly accept a politically powerful religious left among particularly the black churches, even while they do denounce the religious right’s influence.
2 Claudia
May 12, 2008 @ 2:26 pm CESTAs far as reaching out to the religious right, I think trying to do so on the terms of abortion and gay rights is a lose-lose situation for them. The lengths to which they would have to go on that issue to be attractive to socially conservative voters would have the practical effect of alienating a much larger portion of their electorate that is socially liberal. Gays represent about 10% of the population and I would be highly surprised if anything but an ample majority voted democratic. They would be unbelievably pissed if Democrats started making the argument that to believe that being gay makes you lesser-than, or that it’s a "lifestyle" or a "choice" is ok.
Additionally there is no way Democrats could out-do Republicans in that area. They could certainly try to become more tolerant of pro-life and anti-gay rhetoric, but they’d be consistently out-done by their Republican counterparts, who would always remain a more viable alternative to those who vote mainly on those issues.
I agree that everyone, both pro-choice and pro-life needs to drastically tone down the rhetoric on abortion. Having certain misgivings on abortion should not disqualify you as a democrat, nor should being pro-choice do so as a republican (and there are elected officials to reflect that) but I think that if the Democrats really want to reach out to religious voters they need to do it on other issues. Poverty would be a great place to start. I’m sure that there are millions of deeply religious voters who would love to start hearing about using religious motivations to help the poor, something Jesus only talks about like a hundred times in the Bible.
3 C Stanley
May 12, 2008 @ 3:02 pm CESTI think the point would be, Claudia, to make the Democratic party less hostile to the positions that the religious right holds on the issues of abortion and gay rights, not to try to co-opt their positions. The Democratic party has become remarkably hostile to the pro-life position, and their platform was specifically scrubbed of tolerance for anything resembling a prolife position over the last 8-12 years. There used to be plenty of prolife Dems (black Dems, in particular, like Jesse Jackson, have done a complete about face from being strongly prolife to strongly prochoice), but now it’s almost a heresy. There does seem to be a growing realization that the party has gone too far, and some Dems are now adopting more of the "abortion should be safe, legal, and rare’ position.
4 Tully
May 12, 2008 @ 7:17 pm CESTHate to burst any bubbles, but this article nakedly conflates "Christian" and "evangelical" with "religious right," yet doesn’t directly cite a single example of a right-wing evangelical moving anywhere. Evangelical and Christian are NOT synonomous with "right wing," despite decades of attempts to paint them as such, both by right-wingers eager to claim the label as exclusive property and left-wingers eager to demonize all the religious under one convenient label. But nearly 40% of self-described evangelicals are already Democrats, and most of those are most definitely social liberals. And believe it or not, there are also Republican evangelicals who are not right-wing conservatives!
The cites in the article are from a somewhat liberal evangelical, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, a Democratic Party-affiliated "action group" dedicated to rounding up religious votes for Democrats but not ever identified as such, and a think-tank wonk noticing that Dems would really like to pry off some evangelicals from the GOP side for vote-number reasons–a rather obvious statement.
Color me extremely unimpressed with the article. The Evangelical Manifesto website is here, BTW, if you’d like to check out the actual document for yourself. I don’t at all disagree with their primary aim, but there’s a lot of smoke-blowing going on here by those waving the document around for their own political purposes.
5 Michael Merritt
May 12, 2008 @ 7:53 pm CESTI’m going to agree with Tully. I wonder if this is not so much the religious right trying to reach out to the Democrats, but the evangelicals who may be a part of that group.
Take a look at some articles on the evangelical left. You’ll find some surprising names associated with the movement, ones these days you wouldn’t expect to hear.
6 Tully
May 12, 2008 @ 8:00 pm CESTI personally think it’s more the centrist and left-leaning evangelicals cooperating with a Democratic Party attempt to soften the party’s well-earned hostile-to-religion image–but I’d hate to have to try and prove it from the scanty info available.
7 wj
May 12, 2008 @ 8:49 pm CESTI expect that the Democrats will make some (maybe not a vast amount, but some) progress if they simply cease to be overtly hostile to religion. Even without changing their positions on gay rights or abortion, a simple lack of hostility would go a long way. After all, there are a lot of deeply religious people out there who don’t agree with the religious right on those issues either.
8 Chris
May 12, 2008 @ 9:48 pm CESTAmen to Tully. Once again people confuse “Christian” with “Evangelical” with “Fundamentalist” with “Religious Right” etc. Jim Wallis is an “evangelical Christian” but a solid liberal politically. Much of the “Black” church is evangelical yet black voters, including church goers, have consistently and overwhelmingly voted Democratic. The political leanings of “evangelical” Christians, while skewed rightward, cross then entire political spectrum. I can only assume that such articles “prey” on the general ignorance of religious matters by the media.
Now I would say that among conservative Christian there has in the past 8 - 10 years a lot of writing and soul-searching about the mixing of and confusion with one’s political and Christian beleifs. As a Republican and a Christian I would never say that Democratic Party affiliation is inconsistent with a Christian worldview. Having said that I would assume there are more in the party who are suspicious of, if not down right hostile to, said Christian worldview.
9 C Stanley
May 12, 2008 @ 10:05 pm CESTOnce again people confuse “Christian” with “Evangelical” with “Fundamentalist” with “Religious Right” etc.
Well, they all look alike, you know!
10 PatHMV
May 12, 2008 @ 10:11 pm CESTClaudia, notice how you say Democrats need to accept in its party those who have "misgivings" about abortion, while the Republicans, you say, need to accept in its party those who are "pro-choice." Even the Clintons have "misgivings" about abortion and think it should be rare, though people like Amanda Marcotte and that whacko Yale "artist" seem to think that abortions are to be celebrated. For the Democratic party to tolerate politicians with "misgivings" about abortion is not the same level of "compromise" as asking Republicans to tolerate its own politicians being "pro-choice."
That’s not to say I think both sides don’t need to find ways to live with each other, just that we must be careful that "compromise" doesn’t equate to "let the Democrats win."
11 Claudia
May 13, 2008 @ 10:22 am CESTPat, let me rephrase it then. Democrats should allow people into the party who have misgivings about abortion (want limits placed on it etc.) and Republicans should accept people who can agree to the safe-legal-rare position, or at least are not 100% pro-life (people who accept the day after pill, or accept abortion within the first month or two) even if they want limits on the matter.
Mind you, these people already exist. There are pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans, but they are exceptions, while their larger parties remain rather hostile territory. In any event most actual people, whether they identify as pro-choice or pro-life, have rather amorphous positions, few wanting no limits and few wanting no exceptions.
12 Tully
May 13, 2008 @ 5:30 pm CESTI would add to what Claudia and Pat said that putting up single-issue "gateways" and litmus tests on perpetually contentious and oft-unresolvable issues is the surest way to never have a Big Tent party. It may seem contradictory to those who believe that party unity is the only strength there is, but they mistake ideological unity for unity of electoral action and purpose. Coalitions win because they stick together on general principles, not specific ones. Chasing out your party dissidents for simply being dissidents actively weakens the party–the best you can hope for is that the other party does the same thing, driving their dissidents into your fold. But they’ll bring other issues with them….
At least, it does in a pluralistic democracy, where power comes from numbers. Different rules for totalitarian governments.
13 PatHMV
May 13, 2008 @ 5:45 pm CESTClaudia, I’m comfortable with your rephrasing. But the problem with abortion will remain <i>Roe</i>. While Roe remains in place, very little political compromise is possible, because only the Court has power to set the exceptions and restrictions. Undo Roe, and political compromise becomes much easier. Until then, though, judicial nomination fights will always be largely about Roe, however dressed up the arguments may be. The Democratic Party is not about to ever elect Presidents or Senators who would support judges who were likely to overturn Roe. Period. And there’s no way to reach a political compromise on the issue when an ultimately uncontrollable body is making the rules.
14 C Stanley
May 13, 2008 @ 5:59 pm CESTWell put, Pat, and I’m interested to hear Claudia’s thoughts on that. If we really want to have meaningful give and take between the two sides, doesn’t it make sense to have the people who hold the opposing viewpoints having some ability to sit at the table and negotiate? How much has the extremism been driven by a feeling of desperation that comes from lack of control, I wonder?