You know, I’ve always wondered just what the hell this means. Every big name candidate who plans to run for President always says they’re forming a “Committee” to “look into” running for President. Who sits on these committees? Homeless people who have time on their hands? Losers? Hillary and her campaign manager at a Dunkin Donuts? If there’s really a committee, what in God’s name are they discussing?
COMMITTEE GUY #1: So, we’re supposed to look into Hillary running for President.
CG#2: Okay. Uh, so what do we do?
CG#3: Is there an election coming up?
CG#1: I think so. It’s every four years, isn’t it? That would be in… uhh, carry the four…
CG#2: 2010!
CG#3: You idiot, can’t you add? It’s in 2007.
CG#1: Whatever. So, like, what does this entail?
CG#4: Sorry I’m late.
CG#2: Your shirt is on backwards, Number Four.
CG#4: Damn. So that’s why I was walking backwards.
CG#3: Well, as I understand it, everyone gets to vote on who’s going to be President, and she goes around and convinces people to vote for her.
CG#4: President of what?
CG#2: The United States of America.
CG#4: That’s a country, right?
CG#1: The one you live in.
CG#4: That sounds like a hard job.
CG#3: Well, maybe she shouldn’t run for it. It sounds hard.
CG#1: If she didn’t want to run for it she wouldn’t have hired us to sit on this committee.
CG#2: True dat. Okay, what else do we need?
CG#3: I understand it’s expensive.
CG#1: That’s okay, Sandy Berger will steal us some money. All in favour?
(Committe Guys 1, 2 and 3 raise their hands)
CG#4: What are we voting on again?
CG#2: Put your hand up, Bill.
Well, those right-wing commentators are wrong, in my opinion. It’s not that Democrats have been trying to stamp out religion; it’s that they’ve been walking around it like shards of glass. But Hillary is more savvy than your average politician of either stripe. She’s hired a Christian evangelist, Burns Strider, as a consultant to her campaign. Strider had been an aide to Nancy Pelosi when she formed the Faith Working Group last year, a Democratic caucus for religious outreach. It was a big part of the successful Democratic midterm plan. This election is going to be a battle to get the Christian evangelical vote. Which is something the Democrats have sorely need to do. After all, it’s a whole fourth of the electorate.
For what it’s worth, I know people who work in her office, and her running really was not the inevitable done deal everyone seems to think it was in retrospect. Dio’s position was not de facto crazy.
Can you give an example of this? I’ve never seen the Dems do anything but pander shamelessly to religion. Almost all of them, including Hillary, are Christians themselves. can you name one Democrat in Congress who has ever said anything critical of Christianity? Do you doubt that HRC is sincere in her own faith?
The “walking on glass” metaphor, as I understand it, is intended to invoke being extraordinarily, even tediously, careful. I’ve never known it to imply being critical or insincere. Am I wrong?
I don’t know what you mean by “Careful.” careful about what? careful not to offend Christians? Are they any more careful than Republicans in that regard? What differentiates Dems from Pubs in their treatment of religion?
In your first post you made reference to Hillary saying “it’s ok to believe in God,” as though this distinguished her from any other Democrat or from any previous position. I understand you’re saying she’s making an effort to reach evangelicals, but not all evangelicals are conservative. Democrats are no more or less religious – or disdainful of religion – than Republicans. They just tend to get caricatured as anti-Christian because of a few social issues which get falsely defined in terms of being “for or against God” by the religious hard right.
God, I can’t believe you’re still picking at this. But I don’t owe anybody a hundred bucks, so what the hell…
Okay, I’ll gladly concede that exactly what defines an evangelical can be controversial, but I really believe that the most common understanding of it is as described by ReligiousTolerance dot Org: “the conservative wing of Protestant Christianity, comprising many denominations and faith groups that tightly hold to historical Christian creeds, beliefs and practices”. One of the ways they divide Christians, in addition to denomination and so forth, is by what they call “wing”. And these are the “Evangelical wing”, the “Mainline wing”, and the “Liberal wing” (the latter itself subdivided into “Progressive” and “Evolutionary”.
Thus it is, at the very least, not uncommon to view evangelical Christians as conservative rather than liberal.
But I’ve long believed (and argued) that what is perceived as the evangelical right is not necessarily right (wing) at all. The difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans took the initiative in reaching out to these people as far back as the 80s, with Reagan. The Democrats did it in a seriously organized fashion only last year, when Pelosi formed the caucus that I referenced earlier.
You may believe whatever you choose, but it has been my experience that an overwhelming majority of evangelicals have viewed the Republicans as more sympathetic to their cause than the Democrats. And I believe that voting polls will bear me out. The Democrats, led by Hillary, Pelosi, Howard Dean, and others, are working to change that. Hillary is exceptionally skilled at this sort of political strategy, and I believe she will succeed. That’s the point I made, and I stand by it.
Jews are overrepresented in the Senate, at least. Feingold, Feinstein, Kohl, Lautenberg, Levin, Lieberman, Sanders, maybe I’m missing a few others but even so that’s 7% vs. less than 2% of the population.
What’s between you and Liberal is between you and Liberal, but my take on it that Democrats, while being largely Christian themselves and certainly respecting the rights & sensibilities of Christians, nevertheless are willing the entertain the notion that there are non-Christians out there who might not, for instance, want their children to be taught to be good Christians in school. But as soon as a Democrat says this, Republicans will accuse them of trying to kill God.
