THE VAGUENESS PROBLEM–I’m not inclined to intensify my disagreement with Amy Sullivan , but a couple points in her post demand a clarification. Most importantly, at no point did I “endorse” the claim that “that evangelicals aren’t worth targeting as Democratic voters.” What I did argue is that I don’t think there’s a free ride–I don’t think that some minor shifts in rehtoric will be sufficient. Like Sam, I definitely take Sullivan’s point about the potential value in seeing that evangelicism is a more complex phenomenon than described by, say, Kevin Phillips. I’m potentially open to arguments about ways in which ways in which Democrats can attract some of these voters, and even open to claims that major Democrats have needlessly alienated religious believers. But not naming names (and, no, I don’t believe second-tier television personalities count as prominent Democrats for the puproses of this argument) and getting into specific policy choices–in addition to being irritating–makes it difficult for this discussion to occur. The data Sullivan points to are a non-sequitur. The fact that some evangelicals are disillusioned with the Republicans doesn’t mean that they’re ripe to be Democratic converts–if their disillusionment stems from the fact that the Republicans aren’t doing enough to criminalize aboriton or legally stigimitize gay people, for example, they’re not fertile electoral ground for the Democrats. Anyway, if Sullivan is saying that the Democrats can attract evangelicals with no substantive policy shifts I disagree and don’t think she’s provided any evidence; if she believes that some substantive changes are necessary, I can’t evaluate the tradeoffs until she specifies what they are.
There’s also an additional problem. I’m interested that Sam linked to Noam Scheiber’s post about people seeing Hillary Clinton’s sincere religious belief as a punchline. Sullivan and Scheiber are certainly right that there’s a problem of perception here: churchgoing Dems are assumed to be religious, whereas a Ronald Reagan–who had little private commitment to cultural conservatism but wasn’t a churchgoer–can be seen as pious. But it seems to me that broad, vague descriptions of “Democrats” (or even “some Democrats”) being hostile to religion are part of the problem. A lack of focus and specificity on this issue isn’t just bad for debate–it’s bad politics.
–Scott Lemieux