You can walk the walk; can you talk the talk?

Hokay, here’s the first much-anticipated installment of my exploration of a “To Do” list for the Democrats. If you have been trolling the blogs, webzines, and regular media outlets, you have undoubtedly come across more than one report about how the Dems screwed up their big chance and what the action plan should be from here on.

If there is one thing that I have learned while reading blogs over the past couple years, it’s that everyone loves to create their own “Top Five” whenever something pops up, whether the topic is politics, poultry, or porn (or a combo of all three). Now I have received tons of email about this topic from my readers (OK, just one from my Mom), and I have decided that my first target would be the motherlode:

- Invent SHuV (a.k.a. Stupid Human Virus… props to GH for the idea)

However, the details of that would have been outside my field, so I will let my Micro/Immuno friends cover that topic. Instead, I’ll throw a few drops into the current sea of opinion on the rapidly evolving (devolving?) relationship between religion and politics in this country. (Warning: long post)

As much as I would like to, I am not going to spend a lot of time here tearing my clothes and weeping for the Current State of Things, because as much as we liberals would love to debate the underlying issues (e.g. what the Bible really says about homosexuals; the original intent of the founders regarding religion, etc.), the concern isn’t going away any time soon. Thus I think at this point it is best to consider how we can make the current religious fervor work for us rather than against us.

There are a lot of peripheral problems that feed into this issue, and while I plan on addressing many of these on their own, I will mention some in passing here. The first is the need to reverse the last 20 years of conventional wisdom as to who “owns God.” A lot of this has to do with the state of the media and the steady, implacable drumbeat of conservative pundits and politicians to which the media is now marching. You have heard it before: one of the Republican planks is moral values, as if being a Democrat automatically precluded you from a moral life or a relationship with God. The Democrats just don’t have the institutions or foot soldiers for the media cycle right now, but they are working on it (it’s a big topic… I will undoubtedly be talking about it later).

But what do the Democrats say when they get in front of the microphone? The first hurdle to jump is to get over the idea that liberals will somehow get pissed off when you name-drop the Big Guy. This is no small thing; inclusiveness and tolerance are a part of our party values, and it is against that nature to mention Jesus without acknowledging that Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Deadheads, Meatheads, and whatever are cool too. This attention to detail muddles the point and confuses the message (which again is the topic of a post in and of itself). However, if your actions and policies remain tolerant, you should be able to retain their votes and be able to turn them out to the polls using other means.

This brings up the next step; once you have The Big Kahuna out on the table, how do you address him effectively? I admit I am a little torn at this point between two competing thoughts… the first is to go balls-out and launch an assault on all the religious right’s traditional religious strongholds, including abortion and gay marriage. This comes out of the Karl Rove School of Politics: brazenly attack your opponent at his/her perceived strongest point (note his action with The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth).

However, I am at a loss on how to do this effectively… this is not a perception of character or an objective issue that can be subjected to skewed interpretation and spin; it is an inherently personal and irrational article of faith. Besides, what sort of objective would we have here? We aren’t going to become an anti-abortion or homophobic party (much to Nicolas Kristof’s apparent dismay), nor are we going to be able to effectively speak to guys like this. So how do we claim the upper hand on those issues? I don’t have any good answers, and my strong suspicion is that it might not be viable as a strategy here (although I think this Rovian tactic can be co-opted by the left on other issues).

As a result, the Dems should probably pursue a more moderated plan of attack: use the language of faith and religion when discussing our existing platform. This has been mentioned by a few other folks during the post-election haze… during an alcoholic-like “Moment of Clarity,” conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan made this same point on Bill Maher’s show last Friday (although he was his standard retarded self for the rest of the show). It is certainly something I have long believed the Democrats should do. When you come down to it, liberals could make a mighty strong claim on God in a political sense: peace, tolerance for all people, concern for the welfare of your neighbors, generosity towards the least among us, etc. As Kevin Drum says, leave the wingers out of it and make gains on more “reasonable” people of faith (however, I am not so certain I can stop the mockery... it would be too much to bear).

The big disconnect is that nobody on the left frames those positions as inherently moral Christian directives. This is the genesis (pun intended) of the title of this post: we already have several very moral positions staked out, but we don’t communicate that fact effectively. This is not something that should be very difficult to do… despite the denunciations and condemnations of the religious right, I don’t really know of any national pols who are atheist, so most of our leaders should have some personal experience and comfort with the topic. It should also be noted that we can and should be brazen when speaking in these terms… the right loves to speak in code to the religious folk by dropping words commonly used in the pulpit, using snippets of lyrics from popular Christian songs, and employing proxy terms for certain goals and ideas (see Dubya’s Dred Scott reference in the debates). Barack Obama gave them a taste of their own medicine in his keynote address at the DNC convention when he coded a popular Christian song in his remark that “We worship an awesome God in the blue states,” but this should be avoided for the most part… 1) we aren’t nearly as good at the code as the Republicans, and 2) we need to be aggressive in order to get the media yapping about it for us (the Republicans actually use the code to keep certain ideals out of the media). The only guy I know of that does all this is Governor Bob Riley of Alabama, and he’s a Republican.

That in itself is worth noting… this would not be the parroting of a conservative point as it is not an area to which they have truly laid claim. Dubya’s faith-based initiatives are in the same general realm, but they are not firmly ensconced in the dialectic, nor are they sufficient for the needs of this country. Kristof (grrrr…) thinks that Dems should jump on the faith-based initiative hayride, and, given proper restrictions, perhaps we should do that as well… but this me-too-ism certainly should not be at the expense of our more traditional policies which have the potential to make a much larger impact, both politically and for the citizens of this nation.

Note that this also does not preclude negative attacks on the right on religious issues… you can play both offense and defense if you pick your battlefield appropriately. Again, I refer to Gov. Riley as the only guy I know who advocates in the terms I have described for our moral economic policies... we should thus be able to score broadsides against the Republicans on the grounds that they are not really interested in such policies. When they complain, you have them on the defensive, and can then show how their policies don’t match their rhetoric (again, another issue Dems need to work on in general).

Overall, I just don’t see this as being a difficult thing on which to get a handle, and it just seems like such a winning proposition… again, as a liberal and as a Christian, I have long advocated for such a strategy, and it is high time the party adopted it.

Update: In looking back at some things I have read recently, I found that Paul Krugman also shares this school of thought regarding targeting of moderate Christians.