Crazed Secular Base
by digby
Democrats are held hostage by their secular base and need to distance themselves from it in order to win over all the religious southerners who left the Democrats when the atheists took over. Happy birthday Karl.
Stung by their loss in the 2004 presidential election, a growing number of prominent Democrats are, well, finding religion in religion. And with polls saying that 70% of Americans want their president to have “strong religious beliefs,” it’s not hard to deduce that they just might be on to something.
[…]
What Democrats won’t say, however, is that the secular posturing Obama is railing against is more a function of the party’s desire to appease a powerful, but relatively small, constituency than it is a deeply held, widely shared ideological stance. Just as the Republican Party pays obeisance to the demands of the 37% of its base that is white evangelical Christian, the Democrats feel they must not offend the 22% of their core voters who claim no religious affiliation. Why not? Because although they make up less than one-quarter of the coalition, these secular Democrats are much more likely than others to be high-level party activists.
Before I delve into the rest of this, here’s a little known fact:
Americans almost all say religion matters, yet more people than ever are opting out. Not just out of the pews. Out from under a theological roof altogether. In 2001, more than 29.4 million Americans said they had no religion — more than double the number in 1990, and more than Methodists, Lutherans and Episcopalians all added up — according to the American Religious Identification Survey 2001 (ARIS).
Here’s another one:
The largest growing religious cohort in the United States is “non-religious”, doubling in the past decade and growing stronger. And it’s particularly true in the western states where there is a growing preference for “spirituality” over formal religion.
Contrast this with the studies that show Protestants losing ground for decades, perhaps stabilizing now, but certainly not growing, while Catholics remain fairly stable, but divided politically. The Barna group, a Christian organization that does the most in-depth polling on religion in America recently wrote:
“There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions.
If we are to look at the electoral landscape, we will see that the hard core religious cohort is most influential in the south, which is no surprise. But if you take a look at this interesting map, created by USA today, you’ will see that “non-religious” is a rather large minority in the west and midwest swing states
Ok. That’s out of the way. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, it does not make a whole lot of sense to insult a fairly large and growing faction of your own coalition. And if you look at an electoral map, the places where this is most important are the places where the Democrats have the best chance of changing the map from Red to Blue.
It should also go without saying that secularists are decent, hardworking Americans just like the religious folk. If you aren’t careful with this kind of talk you could find yourself making arguments like this:
Right now, there are 50 Democrats in the Senate. How many would be there without African-American voters? … Without the African-American vote, the number of Democrats in the Senate would be reduced from 50 to 37.
As Fred at Slactivist points out:
This is a conversation between Schneider and Woodruff on behalf of people who look like Schneider and Woodruff. The us-and-them subtext is only barely “sub.” Marshall’s description is dead on — they’re not comparing black voters with white voters, they’re comparing black voters with “real” (legitimate, truly American) voters. Separate and unequal.
You will never, ever hear Woodruff and Schneider discussing the hypothetical makeup of the Senate “without the white vote.” You will never hear this from Schneider:
“What would have happened if no whites had voted in 2000? … A Florida recount? Not necessary.”
Underlying all of this is a hugely suggestive, but largely unexplored, fact: Black voters overwhelmingly favor the Democratic Party.
Why this might be so is such a potentially explosive question that it is usually evaded with sleight of hand — “black voters have traditionally voted for Democrats.” That “traditionally” merely puts off the question without answering it (“turtles all the way down”).
The two most obvious possible answers to this question are considered impolite and impolitic — one answer is blatantly racist, the other implies that a major political party is implicitly racist. So don’t expect Judy Woodruff or Bill Schneider to have the courage to ask such a question any time soon.
Perhaps the question should broached in this case too. Why do the vast majority secularists vote for the Democrats? Could it possibly be for the same reason that African Americans do? Could it be that the Republican Party is so implicitly or explicitly religiously intolerant that they have no place in it?
Rodriguez continues:
But the Democratic delegation that nominated South Dakota Sen. George McGovern for president at the ’72 convention represented a profound shift from what had been the cultural consensus in American politics. Whereas only 5% of Americans could be considered secular in 1972, fully 24% of first-time Democratic delegates that year were self-identified agnostics, atheists or people who rarely, if ever, set foot in a house of worship. This new activist base encouraged a growing number of Democratic politicians to tone down their appeal to religious voters and to seek a higher wall separating church and state. With little regard for the traditionalist sensitivities of religious people within or outside of the party, the Democrats also embraced progressive stances on feminism and homosexuality that the public had never openly debated.
Over the next generation, the shift in the Democratic Party pushed many religious voters, including the traditionally Democratic bloc of Southern evangelicals, into the arms of the Republican Party.
But I thought it was the “strident secular rhetoric,” rather than the actual stands on civil rights that resulted in the departure of the Southern evangelicals. (And by all means, let’s not talk about the black elephant sitting in the middle of the room.)
But does Obama’s appeal to religious voters mean that if Democrats want to win they have to adopt the positions of the religious right? Absolutely not.[thank God! — d] The good news is that the vast majority of Americans are sitting out the culture wars. The real combatants are actually minority constituencies within each respective political party — the secularists among the Democrats and the evangelicals in the GOP. Look closely at surveys on religiously charged issues and you’ll find that all religious voters don’t think alike.
No kidding. But this person believes that there is a significant sub-set of religious voters who are pro-choice, pro-gay rights and pro-civil rights who are voting Republican because of these crazed atheists who are holding the Democrats hostage. Except I’ve never seen any evidence that such people exist.
Now, are there pro-choice, pro-gay rights Republicans who vote for the Republicans because of taxes? Sure. National security? Absolutely. You can easily split the baby that way. Some of these voters no doubt consider themselves religious too, and maybe they think the Democrats are hostile to religion as well. But that’s not the reason they are voting Republican. It’s these people who are sitting out the culture wars, not this fantasy faction of pro-choice, gay religious voters who would happily vote for Democrats if it only it weren’t for the atheist extremists in their midst.
If you are voting on the basis of somebody else’s religious belief, you are neck deep in the culture war, by definition. And Republicans who are neck deep in the culture war are social conservatives.
But hey, Greg, thanks for giving Karl the nice present. I’m sure the wingnuts will put this new “crazed secularist base” meme to good use. The media will latch on to it as a way to point out that both parties are equally to blame for the polarized atmosphere.
And choice will go on the chopping block. Anybody who thinks that they can woo Republicans by publicly slapping down this atheist straw man is a fool. If the party insists on going in this direction the social conservatives will insist they show their good intentions with something real. They always do. The death penalty is off the table. So are guns. The uterus is next on the list.
Update: Via Atrios I see that Elton has already trod this ground:
So what’s going on here? Rodriguez makes his real problem clear enough: he is not happy that “Democrats feel they must not offend the 22% of their core voters who claim no religious affiliation.” Go ahead, offend them, he recommends. Tear down this wall separating church and state that only the activist base cares about. Piss on your secular supporters – where else can they go, anyway? – and in return you’ll gain a whole bunch of shiny new religious voters like me, says Mr. Rodriguez.
Stark, but there you have it. Although there was no obvious good reason for stirring this particular pot at this particular time, the Democratic Party is now confronted with a choice. It can change course and become more theocracy-friendly on the advice of people who hear voices in their heads that others cannot discern – I refer, of course, to the “stridently secular rhetoric” – or it can continue to best respect all its diverse supporters by, as a party, neither endorsing nor rejecting any particular belief system or lack thereof.
In other words – walk away from your core voters, or not. Take your pick, Democratic Party.
updateII: Jim Snowden writes a nice short historical summary of the real American political history since 1972. I think you’ll find it a bit more recognizabe than the Martian version of Gregory Rodriguez.
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