Last night, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, unprompted, started talking about Democratic electability in November. They all made reasonably good points, but Obama added a comment that, under normal circumstances, would have been terribly disappointing.<\/p>\n
Obama was explaining his take on reaching out to people outside the traditional Democratic fold, and noted “the issue of faith<\/a>.”<\/p>\n “You know, I am a proud Christian. And I think there have been times — there have been times where our Democratic Party did not reach out as aggressively as we could to evangelicals, for example, because the assumption was, ‘Well, they don’t agree with us on choice,’ or ‘They don’t agree with us on gay rights, and so we just shouldn’t show up.’ And when you don’t show up, if you’re not going to church, then you’re not talking to church folk. And that means that people have a very right-wing perspective in terms of what faith means and of defining our faith. <\/p>\n “And as somebody who believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ, particularly treating the least of these in a way that he would, that it is important for us to not concede that ground. Because I think we can go after those folks and get them.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, some of this is not new. DNC Chairman Howard Dean has made many of the same comments<\/a> as part of his own outreach to evangelicals. For too long, the phrase “religious issue” has necessarily been used to describe conservative opposition to abortion rights and gay rights. If Dems can expand the definition to include issues like poverty and climate change, it’s to everyone’s benefit.<\/p>\n At the same time, however, Dems clearly seem to appreciate church-state separation far more than Republicans do, and have consistently realized that when it comes to national elections, we’re electing a president, not a preacher. Hearing a Democratic candidate mention, in the midst of a debate, that he “believes deeply in the precepts of Jesus Christ” was, shall we say, unusual.<\/p>\n And then there’s that new eyebrow-raising mailing that the Obama campaign sent out. My first instinct was to think of Mike Huckabee’s faith-based style, and his ad touting him as a “Christian leader.” Of course, the comparison is hardly exact — Huckabee has said publicly that he wants to change the U.S. Constitution to bring it in line with “God’s standards,” not to mention all the time he’s spent with Christian Reconstructionists — but the overt religious appeals are at least similar on a rhetorical level.<\/p>\n And since I’ve been very critical of Huckabee for this, I’m acutely aware of the danger of hypocrisy here. I don’t want to give a Dem a pass because he’s a Dem.<\/p>\n But here’s why I’m hesitating: Huckabee isn’t the target of a coordinated smear campaign, and Obama is. Literally millions of people have been falsely told that Obama is a secret Muslim who was educated in a radical madrassa. It comes up in his town-hall forums; it’s come up in nationally televised debates; it’s been distributed by Clinton precinct chairs (all of whom were fired); it’s been referenced by Clinton surrogates (such as Bob Kerrey); it’s been promoted by at least one<\/a> official Republican website; and it’s circulated more and more on a daily basis.<\/p>\n Because the smear is a religiously-based lie, it seems the appropriate response is the religiously-based truth.<\/p>\n Huckabee swinging a Jesus bat has been excessive, in part because it’s unnecessary — he’s a former Baptist preacher, and everyone knows it. Obama’s religious background, on the other hand, is less well known — indeed, it’s become the subject of widespread confusion as a result of the coordinated smear.<\/p>\n If recent history is any guide, Obama’s Democratic detractors will say his religious talk is offensive and his Democratic backers will say it’s acceptable. Objectively speaking, I can relate to the detractors’ concerns — my six years of service at Americans United for Separation of Church and State should offer a hint about my inclinations in this area — but under the circumstances, I don’t think Obama has a lot of choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last night, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama, unprompted, started talking about Democratic electability in November. They all made reasonably good points, but Obama added a comment that, under normal circumstances, would have been terribly disappointing. Obama was explaining his take on reaching out to people outside the traditional Democratic fold, and noted “the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nIt’s a little too big to reproduce here, but Greg Sargent<\/a> and Ben Smith<\/a> have posted the images of a new direct mail piece, which features pictures of Obama praying and speaking from a pulpit. It features a large graphic that reads, “Committed Christian,” touts the “power of prayer,” and includes an account of the moment that “Obama felt a beckoning of the spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life.”<\/p>\n