Following up on Scott's post about the Amy Sullivan interview over at Salon (and I, also, have not yet had a chance to read Sullivan's book), I wanted to point out another peril of Democratic religious outreach, beyond the abortion question.
In the interview, Sullivan worries about Democrats "making fun" of George Bush or John Ashcroft for praying, which in turn makes religious voters believe that Democrats are hostile to religion:
Instead of coming up with a strategy to micro-target different groups in the electorate, I really think it's just adjusting the path overall where they have refused to talk to any of these voters in the past . . . . Those types of approaches aren't geared toward picking off a few voters here and a few voters there. They're geared toward changing the perception about the Democratic Party. And in some cases that perception was unfair and unearned by Democrats. And that was a result of Republican spin and conservative spin. But in some cases, there's something to it.
When you write off Catholics and evangelicals as not your voters, you're stereotyping. When you make fun of John Ashcroft or George W. Bush for praying, you are giving off a sense that there's something wrong with that. That there's something ridiculous about people who spend their mornings with prayer . . . . If you could be getting voters and you're not simply because you're appearing to be antagonistic to them, why wouldn't you make the changes, even if you think they're cosmetic, to win those voters back?
There's a difference, though, between making fun of someone for praying, and (1) exposing a questionable merger of church and state when the Attorney General of the United States conducts prayer sessions in the Justice Department; (2) questioning whether a candidate or elected official who says he/she prays is just making a cynical appeal to religious voters; and (3) questioning whether engaging in a prayerful life should even be a requirement to hold elected office.
Just yesterday, I poked fun at Hillary Clinton -- not for praying, but for appearing to think that an evangelical audience was more interested in hearing about how her faith and prayer have gotten her through the tough times in her life than about her political views. Clinton could have reached out to her evangelical audience and stayed true to her Democratic base if she had focused less on her own troubles and described how her plan for universal health care is a real life policy example of how Jesus called his followers to care for the "least among us."
But that highlights the real problem with infusing political talk with religious talk: The world's other major religions operate by essentially the same directive, as do progressives who who reach the same conclusion without God. And that's why a lot of Democrats -- and yes, even Republicans -- object to mixing politics and religion: our constitution calls our elected officials to be neutral on religion.
The real problem for Clinton in trying to peel off some moderate evangelical voters yesterday is that she knows that the audience of the 700 Club is largely conservative, and still likely fret about socialized medicine fear-mongering. So in the end, trying to get them to vote for her based on her commitment to praying every day seems pretty silly.
--Sarah Posner
