On Tuesday nights I go to rehearsals of the community chorale I belong to. So I miss political events that take place on Tuesday nights. I did not watch tonight’s debates, and between bloggers and the television bobbleheads, I’m not getting a clear picture of how it went down. If you watched, you are welcome to leave your impressions here.
Daily Archives: February 26, 2008
Dodd Endorses Obama
Chris Dodd, who over the past few months earned much respect if not the nomination, has endorsed Barack Obama.
“It’s now the hour to come together,” Dodd said, in an appearance with Obama at a news conference in Cleveland. “This is the moment for Democrats and independents and others to come together, to get behind this candidacy.”
Dodd also made it clear he’d rather serve in the Senate than be Veep. May he long serve in the Senate.
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Cliff Schecter crunches numbers so I don’t have to. Be grateful.
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Right-wing bloggers and some leftie pro-Clinton bloggers are flogging a story that suggests Obama was involved in a shady land deal, as described in this somewhat turgid news story (I love the way Antoin “Tony” Rezko is referred to as “Mr Obama’s bagman” — biased, much?). The story implies that Rezko got Obama a hefty price reduction for a house, but the sellers say that was not so; Obama’s was the best offer. I suspect we’ll hear more about this.
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The shriek you hear is coming from Little Green Footballs: Obama says that pro-Israel doesn’t mean pro-Likud.
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I hope Andrew Sullivan is right:
I’m struck at how many of my fellow pundits still haven’t grasped what is going on out there. They keep using their old devices and tropes to describe something actually new. Last night, I watched Hannity say the word “black” pejoratively about half a dozen times in expressing his fear and loathing of the Obama phenomenon. It was like listening to Lou Dobbs talk about Hispanics. You could see he thinks this is going to work. When Kristol is reduced to actually saying “the politics of fear” rather than simply exploiting it, you realize that the Obama campaign has not just discombobulated Clinton. It has discombobulated the pundit class elsewhere. You even hear long-time defenders of the Bush Republicans talk darkly about big government – as if they didn’t love it for the past seven years, as if they give a shit about the size of government outside election campaigns.
They didn’t see it coming. They still have no clue what they’re grappling with. By the time they do, it may well be over.
We’ve got a long way to go, so I’m trying not to go all gushy yet, but so far I’ve been impressed with the way Obama has handled the smears (see John Aravosis on this).
What Sullivan says reminds me so much of the Dems and Reagan in 1980, and 1984, and the rest of the 1980s, for that matter. Whatever you think of Reagan as president, the man had a native genius for politics, and he pulled the whole GOP along with him. Even in 1988 I don’t think the Dems realized what they were grappling with. Bill Clinton, another political genius, knew how to finesse the game and stymie the Right, but for all his charm and appeal he couldn’t help his party.
I’m not saying Obama is unstoppable, as we’ve got a long way to go. But if Sullivan is right, we could be on the edge of something bigger than one election.
Religion News
Being a bit burned out by the elections and nefarious Bushie plots, I searched for something else to write about and found an interview in Salon of the ever-dreary Amy Sullivan. Amy is once again lecturing us that white evangelicals might vote for Democrats if only Democrats could learn to talk about abortion correctly.
I don’t like the [pro-choice] label. I guess the reason I wrote about abortion the way I did in the book is because I have serious moral concerns about abortion, but I don’t believe that it should be illegal. And that puts me in the vast majority of Americans. But unfortunately, there’s no label for us.
If you don’t believe abortion should be illegal, the standard label for you is “pro-choice.” And wouldn’t it be nice if someone who gets as much attention on the abortion issue as Amy Sullivan actually had a bleeping clue what she was talking about.
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Also at Salon, former evangelical John Marks predicts that more white evangelicals will be voting for Democrats in the future, anyway. Marks told interviewer Louis Bayard,
When George W. Bush came along, there were a number of issues — gay marriage, repeal of sodomy laws, the Ten Commandments on the courthouse — all those issues allowed activists to go to pastors and say, “Look, this is coming right into your own backyard. These new laws are going to change your world, and they’re going to lay the groundwork for the America your children will inherit. So either you vote or you let the country go and you lose your place it.”
It was a moment of both political awakening and political naiveté. Because all of a sudden there was a sense of power that the evangelists could have as one bloc. But then they began to look at what they got for their vote, and they began to look more closely at the policies of the president that they had rallied behind.
The war didn’t turn out well, and that had been seen, in some quarters, as an ordained venture. People said, “If we’re really going to look at the Bible and Jesus as a model for our political involvement, what are we talking about? Christ never talks about homosexuality and talks a great deal about poverty. What about that?” Rick Warren, the most influential evangelist in America right now, is talking about AIDS in Africa. That has to do with a whole different part of the teachings of Christ.
We’ll see.
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I want to give a shout out to my brother About.com Guide Austin Cline, who covers the agnosticism/atheism beat. He has an article up on “Barack Obama’s Religious Beliefs & Background” that I think, praised be, is accurate and unbiased. Wow.
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Yesterday the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey that said nearly half of American adults leave the “faith tradition” they were raised in to either join another religion or drop out of organized religion altogether.
Some of this is old news. The old “mainline” Protestant congregations continue to shrink, while the membership of non-denominational churches and the ranks of the unaffiliated continue to grow.
This is new: The unaffiliated — people who say they are religious but don’t claim allegiance to any particular institution or tradition — are now the fourth largest religious group in America.
Also, from the report:
Groups that have experienced a net loss from changes in affiliation include Baptists (net loss of 3.7 percentage points) and Methodists (2.1 percentage points). However, the group that has experienced the greatest net loss by far is the Catholic Church. Overall, 31.4% of U.S. adults say that they were raised Catholic. Today, however, only 23.9% of adults identify with the Catholic Church, a net loss of 7.5 percentage points.
However, the number of Catholics in America remains fairly steady, mostly because of Latino immigration.
Neela Banerjee writes in the New York Times:
Prof. Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University, said large numbers of Americans leaving organized religion and large numbers still embracing the fervor of evangelical Christianity pointed to the same desires.
“The trend is towards more personal religion, and evangelicals offer that,” Professor Prothero said, explaining that evangelical churches tailored much of their activities to youths.
“Those losing out are offering impersonal religion,” he said, “and those winning are offering a smaller scale: mega-churches succeed not because they are mega but because they have smaller ministries inside.”
I’m not sure what Prothero says about smaller ministries makes sense, but I agree with what he says about “impersonal” religion. Someow just getting dressed up on Sunday morning and going to church just to hear a sermon and sing a couple of hymns ain’t workin’ for people.
But I think there are other factors. The time crunch experienced by two-income families with children might make “going to church” just one more burdensome thing on an already full plate. The breakup of communities possibly makes church attendance seem less compulsive. After years of televangelism, maybe people just expect church services to pack more of an emotional wallop, or at least be entertaining.
What Pew says about Buddhism is discussed on the other blog.