How would Jesus vote?

In the minds of Inside the Beltway Media Types it is still 1985 and Ronald Reagan is still President. 

This is how despite Bill Clinton's two terms in the White House, despite Al Gore's having won the popular vote and having the Presidency stolen out from under him by partisan and unprincipled Supreme Court justices, despite John Kerry's coming within a whisker of unseating a President who should have been re-elected in a landslide but who needed Karl Rove to steal votes for him in Ohio and Florida to stay in office, despite the shellacking the Republicans took in the 2006 elections, despite polls showing the GOP is in for a bigger drubbing come 2008, despite George W. Bush's being the most unpopular President since Herbert Hoover and the most despised since Andrew Johnson, with Richard Nixon as his only rival for either title, in other words despite the reality of the last decade and a half, Insider tools like TIME's Michael Duffy will still go on TV and blather on as if it's the Democrats who are in disarray, demoralized, and on their way to becoming a permanent, merely regional, minority party.

Sez Duffy:

...for the last 25 years, Democrats have done everything they can to alienate religious voters, faith-minded voters...

They did it to woo a secular left that they thought didn't want to have anything to do with that...

It was a really stupid thing to do...

Duffy was talking with Chris Matthews, who'd gotten the ball rolling with this:

...people like Al Gore and John Kerry, the last two Democratic candidates for president, said -- created an image that they were somehow -- we're looking at it right now -- that if they were -- as he put it, when they're sitting next to the pew, that maybe he really doesn't respect your view. In other words, they're not really religious people. They don't share your evangelical views and your deeply religious views. They're too secular.

Anybody remember the John Kerry communion watch?  Right, Kerry engineered that one himself, thinking he could woo "the secular Left" by planting story after story in the Media about how the next time he went to Church there was a chance the priest might deny him the Eucharist.

Ok, without getting into the actual piety of various Democratic candidates versus the supposedly anti-religious image Duffy and Matthews think they've been happy to assume all on their own without any help from derisive and hostile Media Insider types like themselves, and without getting too deeply right away into the fact that "religious" voters, the "faith-minded" voters Duffy claims the Democrats have alienated, are not religious voters, they are Right Wing Christians of various degrees of conviction who are mainly anti-abortion voters, and anti-women having sex voters, and lately and most effectively anti-gay marriage voters---Karl Rove did not get a whole lot of Let's put prayer back in the public school initiatives on the ballots in 2004 and 2006, and I don't remember the theme of 2002 being Nevermind how Patriotic Democrats might be, they don't go to Church often enough---the fact is that the Republicans' now eroding edge among church-going voters is due to two things:

The Right Wing capture of the evangelical churches and a mass movement of Catholic voters into the Republican column, both of which occured almost 30 years ago now and neither of which were much due to, as Duffy seems to think, Democrats making fun of Jerry Falwell.

Both movements were limited in their impact too, in ways that have now turned out to be no longer particularly helpful to the Republicans.

The evangelical vote was mostly Southern and Midwestern and rural.  The Catholics voted for Republicans, all right, but only Republican Presidential candidates.  Otherwise, in the Northeast and the Rust Belt, where they were concentrated, they kept sending Democrats to Congress.  There was a reason they were known as Reagan Democrats.

Reagan Democrats were not moved so much by their religious beliefs as by a reaction to trends of the 60s and 70s, one of which included Roe vs. Wade.  Their motivations were also economic---times were tough and Jimmy Carter didn't seem to be helping or have a clue how to---and "patriotic"---they hated the anti-war movement which they confused with the counterculture in general; they accepted the cant that Democrats were soft, not just on defense, but on crime, drugs, and bad behavior by uppity women, uppity black people, uppity college kids, and uppity gays.

In short, Reagan Democrats were reactionaries, angrily at odds with the times.  But times always change, and with them so do people's attitudes.  Reagan Democrats have been disappearing from the political landscape since the middle of Reagan's second term.  Many have died, many have gotten used to the changes they used to hate and fear, and many have just come to realize that, mad as they were at the "Liberals," the Republicans are not on their side, economically, culturally, or even spiritually---the Religious Right is anti-Catholic, after all.

Meanwhile, the evangelicals have allowed themselves to be used as tools for the Republicans' Southern Strategy, which has always been racist not religious.  Piety is just the mask for the the racial animus of a great many white male voters.

The racism that has undergirded Republican victories for the last four decades has never figured in Beltway Insiders' analysis of the political scene.  Republican Presidential candidates make the pilgrimage to Bob Jones University every four years because they like the food in the dorm cafeterias.

To the degree that the evangelical vote has been actually a vote of religious conviction, it has been an anti-abortion, anti-evolution, anti-gay, anti-feminist vote.

How Democrats are supposed to win that vote, or why they'd want to, just by talking more about God and Jay-sus, I don't know.

I know why Beltway Insider types think they should try.  But I'm getting to that.

The Democrats' loss of these "religious" voters hurt them most in 1980, 1984, and 1988.  Since then, as I said, Reagan Democrats have been disappearing and the evangelical vote, because it has been mainly a Southern and Midwestern vote, helped the Republicans control Congress when the nation's demographic upheavels temporarily favored the Southern wing of the Sun Belt, but it's not won them the Presidency on its own ever, and as the Reagan Democrats have left the ranks, certainly hasn't won them any Presidencies since the first George Bush.  The Insider Media can only make the case that it has by ignoring the fact that the Republican candidate has lost three of the last four elections, came very close to losing the fourth and probably only didn't because Karl Rove stole votes.

This is why I say that in their minds Ronald Reagan is still President; at least, he might as well still be---the history of the country since 1985, and particularly the history of the last 15 years, doesn't figure in their thinking at all!

But Duffy's blockheaded remarks are based not just on willful amnesia but also upon assumptions that are elitist, unconsciously anti-religious, and, basically, racist.

The Beltway Insiders assume that the only religious vote that matters is the white evangelical Protestant vote.

The Democrats' most loyal constituency includes some of the most devout Christians in the nation, African Americans.  But they're not white so their religion doesn't count.

The Democrats are making serious inroads among some of the most devout Catholic voters in the nation, Hispanics.  But they're not Prostestant so their religion doesn't count.

Recently, the Democrats have taken away the Republicans' advantage among Muslim voters.  But they're not Christian so their religion doesn't count.

And everybody knows Jews are all atheists anyway, right?

The idea that Democrats have a problem appealing to religious voters that they need to address if they are going to win elections depends...well, first, on pretending they don't win any elections, but then on believing that the religious vote is the Right Wing Christian vote, as if yahooism and know-nothingism and racism and homophobia and misogyny and a patriarchal authoritarianism are all there is to being religious.

Needless to say, if this is religion the Beltway Insiders themselves scorn and despise religion, for not only is it a religion that precious few of them practice, it's a religion that an even more precious few can speak of in private without a sneer.

But it's of a piece with their faux populism too.

In the journalism of the Beltway Insiders the only real Americans are white, rural, Southern and Midwestern, salt of the earth types.

Which is to say that by their own conventional wisdom they themselves do not count as real Americans.

Ezra Klein has a good take on the self-loathing behind this attitude and "the reverse elitism of the chattering classes."

Democrats need to remember this whenever the likes of Michael Duffy start to lecture them on what voters they need to appeal to and how to win those voters over.

The Beltway Insiders are privileging a "religion" they themselves despise and arguing for a definition of American that not only excludes the Insiders themselves but everybody who lives on either coast or in a city and who has an office job and a college education and/or a union card and isn't white---in short, the majority of Americans aren't American.

As usual, digby got there first.

Comments

[Ken Houghton]

"the Democrats have taken away the Republicans' advantage among Muslim voters"

Well, no, not even with the passive voice.

If I give you a Phil Rizzuto baseball card because I think Scooter is sh*t, without getting anything in return, you haven't "taken away" anything.

Similarly, if one party spends all its time demonising a religious group, the other cannot be said to have "taken away" the loyalties of that group.

Otherwise, spot on.

[merciless]

It's obvious to anyone who's looking that the republicans, and their beltway pundit mouthpieces, have always seen fundamentalist Christian southerners as nothing more than useful rubes, easy to fool and even easier to manipulate.

The fact that almost none of the fundies' most precious tenets have been made into law during the Bush years should have been a clue to them.

Now that this administration has burned nearly all of their bridges to more moderate, reality-based republicans, the ones left in charge are in the process of creating what I fear will be the most fear-mongering, racist, sexist, hateful campaign in American history. Hillary is their dream candidate, but whoever wins the dem nomination is going to have to have balls of steel to survive it.

And after the election, be prepared for domestic terrorism on a massive scale.

[burritoboy]

"It's obvious to anyone who's looking that the republicans, and their beltway pundit mouthpieces, have always seen fundamentalist Christian southerners as nothing more than useful rubes, easy to fool and even easier to manipulate."

Well, no, not historically. Example: Even as recently as the early 1990s, the Californian Republican party was a very critical part of the Republican base. The two most recent Republican presidents had come out of Orange County, the governors had been Republicans for approaching a decade, and folks as diverse as Weinberger, Meese and many others had come out of California politics. The first Republican Party Chairman who was from the deep South was Lee Atwater, 1989-1991. Before then, only George Bush had been a party chair from any Confederate state. The first Republican leadership in the Congress that was notably from the South was Newt Gingrich/ Dick Armey in the early 1990s.

[brew]

Hi Lance.

Really good, original analysis.

Excellent work.

!

[Andrew Pulrang]

In other words, "We all agree these are idiots we're talking about here, but in America, you've got to pay proper respect to the rubes or you won't get anywhere." Hard to know who should feel more insulted, the voters, the candidates, or the rubes!

[gogiggs]

Burritoboy, I don't see how anything you wrote contradicts what merciless wrote.

Not letting the southerners into positions of power is entirely consistent with viewing them as rubes. Yes, the California Republicans were/are important and they are exactly the ones that settled on the fundamentalist/christian/southerners as "useful rubes", starting with Nixon's southern strategy and continuing through Reagan's cozying up to the Phyllis Schlaflys and Jerry Falwells.

[Victoria]

As the Brits say, "Brill!"

[burritoboy]

"Yes, the California Republicans were/are important and they are exactly the ones that settled on the fundamentalist/christian/southerners as "useful rubes", starting with Nixon's southern strategy and continuing through Reagan's cozying up to the Phyllis Schlaflys and Jerry Falwells."

But, if they only saw them as useful idiots, why would the leadership shift from being massively dominated by non-Southern politicians (a lot of it Californian) to the current situation, where most of the party leadership actually IS Southern (and many from the deep South). After all, they had got most of the South's actual votes by the early 1990s already.

I'm not saying that the current Southern leadership doesn't view the Southern voters as useful idiots (they probably do) but that there is more going on than just exploitation of Southern voters. Plus, why particularly the strategy of pursuing an ever-more solid South when the Republicans needed more to focus on Northern suburbanites and the Hispanic vote in the period 2001-2007? Sure, you can identify ideological reasons, but not coldly tactical ones (if Republicans were getting even more reasonable minorities among Hispanics, they would be competitive in numerous places where they have no chance now).

Lastly, Nixon's Southern strategy worked nearly as well in the north as it did in the south. He probably would have done something like it even if he didn't get any extra votes from the south.

[Rana]

Thank you for emphasizing that "religious" is not coequal with "white fundamentalist Christian" and "American" is not coequal with "white fundamentalist rural Christian man."

I'm so frigging tired of both false equations that it's a relief to have someone else do the arguing for me!

[James E. Powell]

burritoboy,

The Republican leadership in the Reagan-Bush I years did not include all of the former Dixie-crats who would switch to the Republican Party. Gramm comes to mind, but I am thinking that Helms and Thurmond may also fall into this category.

What is more important is that, beginning with Reagan's 1980 campaign, the Republican Party was dominated by Southern politics, most of it race-coded.

Reagan launched his 1980 campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi, with a speech declaring that states' rights was back. Once he was president, he took the side of Bob Jones University against the IRS. He and the Republicans steadfastly and very publicly refused to take a stand against apartheid. I could go on, I could find more examples if I took the time, but the point is that the Republicans absorbed and exploited what George Wallace began in 1968.

That the leadership became more Southern in fact as the years went by was the result of seniority and the decline of the Democratic Party in the south after the Civil Rights Acts, the Voting Rights Acts and other similar legislation.

Side note. Whenever this era and this issue is discussed, I am always surprised that no one mentioned busing. It was THE issue throughout the south and in many cities in the north.

[pro choice lib]

"The Democrats' most loyal constituency includes some of the most devout Christians in the nation, African Americans. But they're not white so their religion doesn't count.

The Democrats are making serious inroads among some of the most devout Catholic voters in the nation, Hispanics. But they're not Prostestant so their religion doesn't count."

Which is why their right to vote will be denied at every turn. In the GOP's collective mind they're not 'Muricans.

[Junius Brutus]

Outstanding post.

I would only add that if you pander to the minority of religious nutcases on the right, you will simultaenously be turning off the very large bloc of nonreligious voters like me. And while religious people are a declining demographic, the secular demographic is growing like gangbusters.

People like Duffy may not respect us but our views are well supported and we trace our heritage in this country back to the Enlightenment values of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and all the Deists who took part in the Revolution.

[Kevin Hayden]

Democrats don't pander to religious types who practice hate. That's a big distinction. CINOs are not followers of Jesus, just as MINOs don't follow Muhammed's teachings.

That's the distinction between what Dems practice and the memes Republicans spread about Dems. Dem candidates should emphasize that distinction clearly.

[Dawn]

Why don't the Dem candidates speak as clearly about this as Lance, Digby, and the posters on both their sites? Obama came closest in his convention speach. More of that please.

I wish more speakers would hammer home your point that being religious does not mean white Christian evangelical. It is so obvious, but no one ever says it. Very rereshing!

[Dawn]

Yeah, that would be 'refreshing'. Even a preview does not always help me. Sorry!

[Ken Muldrew]

The separation of church and state worked well for a while, but ethical behavior in collective enterprises only works as long as everyone (or nearly everyone) agrees to act ethically. Once that agreement is gone, it's gone for good. Probably the only way to get back to a state where religion is separate from politics is to get rid of religion. That's going to be a tough nut for the U.S., but there really isn't any other choice available.

It's like a small town where everyone leaves their doors unlocked. One night a thief comes along and cleans everyone out. Now they have to lock their doors for ever after. Nobody is very happy about the situation; they don't thank the thief for pointing out the holes in their security arrangements, but they have to live with the new rules.

Modernity is just incompatible with religion (Serious religion! Not the play acting of the Jews, Catholics, and a few others). Since a thief has come along and stolen the separation ethic, there remains no alternative but to remove religion from the canon of acceptable ways of thinking about the world.