Electoral Values
OK, one final political comment, then I'm going cold turkey through the weekend. This is basically a revise-and-extend job on a comment I posted to a pseudonymous LiveJournal yesterday, but I need to get it out of my system.
Much is being made of the fact that "moral values" was apparently the deciding issue for a key set of voters on Tuesday. There's some quibbling about whether that's really true, and some outrage over definitions, but there's been a lot of hand-wringing about why the Democrats lose those votes, and what they need to do.
First and foremost, I do not think that this is a problem that can be addressed by the candidate, or the national-level party. John Kerry handled the faith issue about as well as it could be handled, and it didn't make a bit of difference. The problem is not on the political side, it's on the religious side-- the Democrats don't need a candidate who talks more about religion, they need religious people who talk more about politics.
The Republican majority has been built on a network of people pushing the notion that Jesus wants you to vote for Republicans. Yes, they're using some weird, hateful warped image of an Old Testament style Jesus that doesn't ring true to the Gospel readings of my Catholic upbringing, but that's their message: Jesus wants you to vote for the Republicans.
The counter to this needs to be not "It's OK to vote your conscience" or "It's not actually a sin to vote for a Democrat" (which liberals were pathetically grateful to get from the Church this time out), but an active "Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats." Backed up with the full weight and majesty of Scripture-- which is an easy case to make, if people are willing to stand up and make it.
The problem here is that liberal religious people are not generally of that temperament. That's why they're liberal religious people, after all: they approach religion with a greater sense of humility, and human fallibility, and are more likely to be forgiving of lapses or character flaws than the fire-and-brimstone hypocrites of the Right. Standing up and declaring affirmatively that Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats is not a thing that comes easily to the religious liberals I know-- the mere thought of claiming to know the mind of God is enough to give them hives.
But if liberals want to take back religious issues, that's what we need. Complaining about how the media misuse terms won't help, putting more religion in the stump speech won't do the trick, complicated and nuanced explanations of how there's nothing wrong with holding different opinions will just bore people. The message you need is short and simple: Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats. Cast the money-changers out of the Temple, and all that.
I hate saying this for two reasons: first and foremost, because this is necessarily and unavoidably advice to others. I am not a religious person, though I retain some reflexive Catholicism. I can't claim the kind of faith that I would need to have to be an active part of this, and I won't pretend to believe for the sake of politics-- that would belittle the deep faith of many people I respect and admire. And this can't come from political operatives or non-believers: it's got to come from people who are within the religious community.
The second reason I hate to say this is that it's a horrible thing to ask. Pushing the sort of counter-message that needs to be out there will require the politicization of people who are not, by nature, political. It means asking good and decent people to behave in a manner that they will not like. And I'm not sure any of us would be entirely happy with the long-term effects.
But that's the only way I see to counter the Right's domination of religious issues. Chipping away at the flaws in the arguments, and pointing out their hypocrisies won't do it-- that's fundamentally a reactive strategy, and it's too easy for them to shrug off. You need an active and affirmative message to put out there: Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats. It won't get the real fire-breathing "God hates fags" crowd to change their mind-- they cling too tightly to their selective readings of the nasty bits of the Old Testament for even the entire New Testament to dislodge them-- but it's a strong case, and can move some of the more moderate people who vote on cultural issues. And more importantly, it can start to shift the public perception of religion back in the direction of sanity-- even the "he-said, she-said" quasi-balance you get with mainstream journalism would be an improvement at this point.
There's my one bit of political strategization for you: Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats. If we want to take back religious issues, we need ten thousand people like Fred Clark, only louder, to start spreading that message. Changing candidates won't help, changing platforms won't help-- the occasional stump-speech God talk will just get drowned out by hundreds of preachers thundering that Jesus wants you to vote for the Republicans. Their braying needs to be answered by other preachers, or even just members of the congregation, coming back with: "No, Jesus wants you to vote for the Democrats."
Unless that starts happening, the only thing you can do is wait for older conservative voters to start dying off.
Update: I wrote the above this morning, before I saw Jim Henley's post on more or less the same subject, which is worth reading. What I'm saying is pretty much complementary to what Jim says: religious talk won't make the difference for Democrats, because religious voters have specific policy goals in mind. What I'm saying is that the solution is to work on this from the religious end, and try to change those goals.
Posted at 7:17 AM | link | follow-ups |