l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 by Rick aka Mr. Brutally Honest
At least not as strongly.
Back in 2008, this blog covered the writings of a site called Clergy for
Obama, a site that has now gone private (which is revealing in and of itself
). It was chock filled with one religious leftist post after another
singing the praises of then Senator Obama and the hope and change he
promised to bring the country.
Many of those voices, or certainly voices like those who posted, are
apparently not quite as enamored with The Won today.
In 2008, Barack Obama took aim at the “pew gap,” the overwhelming
Republican edge among voters who regularly attend church.
The Democratic presidential nominee came nowhere near closing it, but he
didn’t have to. He just needed an extra percentage point or two among
traditional GOP constituents, and he got it.
The Democratic National Committee is promising a repeat performance in
2012. But some religious leaders and scholars who backed Obama in 2008 are
skeptical. They say the Democrats have, through neglect and lack of focus,
squandered the substantial gains they made with religious moderates and
worry it will hurt Obama in a tight race against Republican Mitt Romney.
The DNC’s faith outreach director, the Rev. Derrick Harkins, said the
party has strong relationships with religious groups. But as evidence of
their concerns, critics point to the public debate that followed Obama’s
endorsement of gay marriage, a decision the president said was based in part
on his Christian faith.
No prominent clergyperson was sent out as a surrogate by the
administration to explain the religious argument in favor of same-sex
relationships. Instead, the main religious voices connected to Obama in the
public sphere were the ministers who serve as his personal spiritual
advisers and generally oppose gay marriage. Those ministers who were willing
to comment — many weren’t — said they were struggling with Obama’s
decision.
“I think there is a viable religious left who can be persuaded by a
carefully articulated religious argument, but no one is making it,” said
Valerie Cooper, a religious studies professor at the University of Virginia
and Obama supporter. “I’m concerned that the administration has not
followed through on the promise of 2008.”
Cooper recently attended a White House briefing for academics on the
work of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She and
other religious scholars say they understand that pressing issues such as
the economy had to be the priority. Still, they argued more could have been
done to broaden the party’s tent.
“I get frustrated when I talk to evangelical friends or students and
they ask, ‘How can you be a Christian and a Democrat?’” Cooper said.
David Kim, a Connecticut College religious studies professor, helped
advise the 2008 campaign when videos of incendiary sermons by the Rev.
Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former Chicago pastor, threatened to derail the
nominee. Kim, who attended the briefing with Cooper, described the
administration’s faith-based work as “ad hoc” and “with no long-term
strategy.”
“I didn’t really get a clear sense of what the mission is,” Kim said.
In 2008, the Obama campaign sought ways to cooperate with religious
moderates and conservatives and make them feel more welcome among Democrats.
Many political veterans dismissed the idea as quixotic. For the past decade
or so, exit polls have found that the more often a voter attends church,
the more likely he was to back a conservative candidate, earning the GOP the
nickname “God’s Own Party.”
The Obama campaign built grassroots support among religious voters by
organizing “faith house parties,” sending Roman Catholic and evangelical
surrogates on the campaign trail, and holding faith caucus meetings at the
party’s national convention. Cooper remembers a conference call the
campaign organized with Democrats who opposed abortion rights and a position
paper the campaign circulated from a Catholic theologian about reducing the
need for abortion.
According to exit polls, the effort paid off. Obama made gains over the
2004 nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, with voters who attend
religious services more than once a week, 43 percent to 35 percent. Obama
also won 26 percent of the evangelical vote, compared with 21 percent for
Kerry.
“It wasn’t huge, but it was statistically significant,” said John
Green, director of the University of Akron’s Bliss Institute for Applied
Politics. Religious Democrats began to talk of a new era for the party.
But from 2008 to 2010, when control of Congress was at stake, the DNC
cut its faith outreach staffing from more than six people to one part-timer,
according to The Washington Post.
The big question is whether or not Religious Leftists will once again
fulfill the role of useful idiot.
I suspect many of them will.
This administration is all about fooling the gullible and sadly, religious
leftists have proven to be some of the most easily led. |
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