Thoughts in anticipation of Super Tuesday

About a year ago, I started saying that most important and difficult race in '08 was going to be Obama vs Clinton, not Ds vs. Rs. Now, I'll be straight with you all: I'm a big Obama fan, and have been since the beginning of his national-level political career: his 2004 Democratic convention address. This is what I wrote then:

Everyone's talkin' bout Obama. First black president?... that speech set out a vision of liberal values in terms that no conservative could disagree with. Compare this with Clinton, whose method of triangulation took up conservative buzzwords and values, essentially conceding that liberalism was a moral vacuum. I've been thinking for quite some time that liberals need to stop talking in terms of rights and starting talking in terms of what IS right.

Oh, what a cute, naive, idealistic, 23-year old I was!

Intuitively, I felt that Obama could reestablish a Democratic majority, and make progressive values mainstream again. I'd just read What's The Matter With Kansas, and to hear Barack succinctly dismiss the red-state vs blue-state paradigm as a fiction meant to polarize and manipulate America and prevent us for working together for our common interests was exhilarating.

And obviously, it helps that he's an incredible orator, able to authentically tap into black religious discourse in a way that is still inclusive and accessible. Back in 2004, the liberal evangelical Jim Wallis was trying to tell us "God Is Not A Republican Or A Democrat". But John Kerry's patrician inability to connect with white evangelicals made that line a hard sell. I remember wincing at this during the 2004 presidential debates:

QUESTION: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person? KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

Translation: Abortion is morally wrong, but because of these lofty abstract liberal ideals about separation of church and state, rights and pluralism, I'm unable to prevent it from happening. Morality doesn't really figure in to how I govern, but I feel your pain.

Compare that with Obama.

Questioner: I see a great a contradiction going on in our society, right now, and I don’t understand it. Maybe you can help me out. On the one hand, we see a guy like Michael Vick, who will likely lose his livelihood and spend some time in jail and there’s been a tremendous outcry against this man because of fighting dogs. There’s been a huge, huge reaction. On the other hand, we have 34 years and counting where thousands of innocent, sweet babies are being killed every day through what we call abortion, yet that voice has seemingly died out. What would you do about that and what’s happening in our society when people can’t seem to see this contradiction?

Obama: The issue of abortion, I don’t think, has gone away. People think about it a lot, obviously you do and you feel impassioned. I think that the American people struggle with two principles: There’s the principle that a fetus is not just an appendage, it’s potential life. I think people recognize that there’s a moral element to that. They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.

I don’t think people take the issue lightly. A lot of people have arrived in the view that I’ve arrived at, which is that there is a moral implication to these issues, but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination. And I don’t think they make it lightly. I don’t think they make it callously, so I reject a comparison between a woman struggling with these issues and Michael Vick fighting dogs for sport. I don’t think that’s sort of how people perceive it.

Now, this is one of those areas – again, I think it’s important to be honest – where I don’t think you’re ever going to get a complete agreement on this issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then I can’t change your mind. I think there is a large agreement, for example, that late-term abortions are really problematic and there should be a regulation. And it should only happen in terms of the mother’s life or severe health consequences, so I think there is broad agreement on these issues.

One area where I think we should have significant agreement is on the idea of reducing unwanted pregnancies because if we can reduce unwanted pregnancies, then it’s much less likely that people resort to abortion. The way to do that is to encourage young people and older people, people of child-bearing years, to act responsibly. Part of acting responsibly – I’ve got two daughters – part of my job as a parent is to communicate to them that sex isn’t casual and that it’s something that they should really think about and not think is just a game.

I’m all for education for our young people, encouraging abstinence until marriage, but I also believe that young people do things regardless of what their parents tell them to do and I don’t want my daughters ending up in really difficult situations because I didn’t communicate to them, how to protect themselves if they make a mistake. I think we’ve got to have that kind of comprehensive view that says family planning and education for our young people and so forth – to prevent teen pregnancies, to prevent the kinds of situations that lead to women having to struggle with these difficult decisions and we should be supportive of those efforts. That’s an area where there should be some agreement.

Translation: Morality is important in how I will govern. Things aren't always black and white, though. We live in a complicated world.

That brings me to another factor that is really going to bring it home for Barack, if he makes it to the general. In 2004, I was just starting to feel it but couldn't fully predict how far it would go: the hemorrhaging of the religious right. Jerry Falwell is dead. Pat Robertson is marginalized, disliked by many evangelicals. Ted Haggard got caught with his pants down. To me it seems that evangelicals are looking for a way out, or a path forward. They're embarrassed by the way their leaders have conducted themselves. They're embarrassed by George W Bush. By degrees, they seem more and more ready to embrace new narratives about the role of faith in politics, about the relationship between Christianity and the broader culture. They're getting curious about environmentalism and anti-poverty movements. The once-sturdy alliance between economic conservatives and social conservatives is getting more fragile. They're realizing that we live in a complicated moral universe.

For someone who can successfully reach out to that audience, this is an amazing opening, and BHO is taking it. Despite a solidly liberal platform, and solidly liberal record, the guy is wildly popular with evangelicals who don't even agree with him about policy! My old archnemesis Relevant Magazine, the self-appointed voice of young hip evangelicals, asked their readers who Jesus would most likely vote for, in a readers poll conducted in November/December. Barack Obama came in first. Mike Huckabee came in second! Hillary Clinton was voted "least Christian". (Leave it to Relevant to ask a poll question about which candidate was "least Christian!")

Many of these people are still pretty damn conservative. According to the same poll, their pet issues are illegal immigration and bioethics! And yet they're way stoked about voting for a candidate with a very liberal record on these issues. This is big.

These are kind of obvious meta-narratives, sorry. I'll go into more detail in future days. I'm getting back into the blogging business. 2008!