Legal Commentary

The [W]Right Church

By Big Tent Democrat

Digby draws larger lessons for Democrats from the Wright Fiasco:

Amy Sullivan, one of the primary proponents of putting religiosity at the center of Democratic politics doesn't seem to know what to make of the problems Wright has caused for Obama. Apparently, she never considered the possible downsides of hewing so closely to religion that people think it's definitional. She and he friends didn't seem to realize that all the blather about secular Democrats was never about religion, but about social conservatism. You get no points for going to the "wrong kind" of church. You'd think they would have figured that out a long time ago.

Indeed. In my first post at TalkLeft, I discussed the dangers of Obama's Dem bashing on religion. Walter Shapiro argues that the chickens have come home to roost:

"The single biggest gap in party affiliation among white Americans is ... between those who attend church regularly and those who don't. Democrats, meanwhile, are scrambling to 'get religion,' even as a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular."

-- Barack Obama, from "The Audacity of Hope"

This is a week when the Illinois senator probably wishes that he could say, "I'm from the stubbornly secular wing of the Democratic Party." Back in the days when religion in presidential politics was mostly limited to greeting Billy Graham when he arrived for an Oval Office photo op, White House candidates did not have to worry about off-the-reservation reverends. But that was before the 2008 Democrats called out the image engineers to bridge the God Gap. In Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democrats boast the most overtly religious cross-on-their-sleeve presidential candidates since Jimmy Carter prayed alone.

Now Obama may be paying a political price (precise cost estimates will be available only after the May 6 North Carolina and Indiana primaries) for his embrace of wrong-way Rev. Jeremiah Wright. . . . In a sense, the Democrats have been lucky since they are blessed with two candidates who have been walking the pews of religion for decades -- from Obama's lyrical autobiographical account of joining the Trinity United Church of Christ to Clinton's public flirtation with the religiously based "politics of meaning" during her early White House years. But now the Democrats may be dealing with the dread consequences of answered prayers.

Indeed.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 30, 2008 (boomark / email).