Dear Democratic candidates:
You aren’t going to win the votes of conservative Christians no matter how often you invoke God in your stump speeches, and no matter how often you speak glowingly of your faith. The reason is simple: the God you speak about ain’t the God they recognize. For all intents and purposes, you will always be considered godless heathens by them, even if you ban all discussions about abortion rights, women’s rights, etc. Just take a gander at this piece by a “Christian” reporter at LifeNews.com if you don’t believe me.
The leader of a top evangelical ministry is taking issue with pro-abortion Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Prison Fellowship Ministries President Mark Earley says the two are trying to reach out to Christian voters by talking about God but promoting the killing of God’s children through abortion.
The two top candidates for the party’s nomination have been very open in recent weeks to talking about their faith and they are actively courting religious voters. […]
But Earley writes in a recent commentary that their efforts are disingenuous because the two candidates take decidedly anti-Christian views on some political issues, namely abortion.
“I appreciate that the candidates are taking a risk when they talk about their faith,” Earley wrote in an opinion column.
“The problem is that all of this ‘God Talk’ misses the point: what Christians want – or should want – is a candidate who shares their moral and culture concerns, not just their religious vocabulary,” he explained.
He points out that both Obama and Clinton recently addressed a Planned Parenthood conference and expressed their unbridled support for abortion — which is anathema to Biblical value.
Get the picture? They won’t be voting for Democrats no matter how strongly you profess your faith, and no matter how far away you run from “liberal” values in your campaign speeches. The best you can hope for is that Christian conservatives sit the next election out because the Republican nominee isn’t considered a real Christian (i.e., Romney) or is too squishy on “moral values” like homophobia and and the “right to life” (i.e., Guliani).
Indeed, if you were truly intelligent (and independent of your DLC trained campaign consultants), you’d recognize that the Republicans won the last two Presidential elections (or made them close enough to steal) by appealing to the GOP’s base supporters, not by attempting to appeal to the mythical center. Karl Rove never met a radically conservative issue (gay marriage bans, anyone?) he wasn’t willing to promote to insure the turnout of conservatives, and that approach worked pretty well for the Republicans over the last decade. Only the incredible fiasco that is the Bush administration, coupled with the most corrupt Congress in history, prevented it from succeeding again, last Fall.
So, in light of the Republicans’ success at turning out their base supporters to win elections, why are so many of you deliberately running away from the progressive wing of your own party? You know, the largest group of people who call themselves Democrats? The same people whose values and positions are shared by a majority of Americans on everything from health care to Iraq, abortion rights to an economic policy that favors American jobs over corporate profits gleaned from outsourcing those jobs to foreign shores? Indeed, one can make a legitimate claim that it was the willingness of Democratic candidates to proudly proclaim their progressive values that won them control of Congress in 2006.
The country is read for a progressive, people oriented populist message. Yet, the two leading Democratic candidates, both in the polls and in fund raising, Clinton and Obama, continue to disparage progressives and progressive values, running away from us as if we were plague infested rats.
It’s not 1992 anymore, boys and girls, and we don’t need Clinton style “triangulation” between “New Deal liberalism” and “Reagan Conservatism” anymore. The public has seen how the corporate friendly policies of the Clinton years, and the even more corporate friendly policies of the Bush years, have drained our nation of jobs and created the greatest wealth disparity since the Great Depression. They don’t want to hear about the advantages of “free trade” and they sure as hell don’t want to see multi-millionaires and billionaires and their corporations sitting fat and happy while the rest of us remain mired in jobs (those of us who have them) that don’t pay enough to cover our mortgages, our food costs, or the expense of filling our gas tanks with $3 plus gasoline.
So, a word to the wise, dear candidates. If you want my vote, and the votes of millions like me, stop trying so hard to appeal to hard core conservative nutjobs who vote for whomever their preacher tells them is the best man (which, by the way will always be a Republican). They make up a smaller and smaller percentage of our population, and there is no way you are going to get them to vote for you in any event. Try appealing to the people who actually vote for Democrats for a change. Otherwise, you might just wake up on election day and find we haven’t shown up at the polls on your behalf.
Sincerely,
Steven D
