(Cross-posted from The Field.)
The intro to yesterday's "Civil Forum" featuring both major presidential candidates by the Reverend Rick Warren called on the "need to restore civility" and "stop demonizing" each other in America. That's one example of how the forum was supposedly on McCain's turf (an evangelical Christian church) but stylistically was on Obama's (a post-partisan end to boomer generation polarization). This forum simply would not have been possible four years ago... nor twenty years ago. And I doubt very much that any other prospective Democratic nominee would have attended it, nor have walked away unscathed as Obama did yesterday...
(You can see the whole thing in YouTube segments, here.)
Warren is not your grandfather's Rev. Billy Graham. He's certainly no Rev. Jerry Falwell or religious-rightist. Stylistically, he stands somewhere between Tony Robbins' self-help inspirational schtick and Oprah Winfrey's talk show pulpit. Guys like him pioneered - in the realm of religion - many of the same techniques that grew the Obama campaign to count with 2 million donor activists. More than 400,000 ministers - including from other religions - have sought and received training from Warren on how to rally the faithful. In politics, that would be called training for community organizers.
So when Warren said that both Obama and McCain were "my friends," and "patriots," and gushed with feel-good admiration throughout the program for both of them, he was - like Obama - "turning the page" from the polarized politics of recent decades. That was very reinforcing to Obama's message. Far more lasting than any impressions left by the candidates' statements (as the more-watched Olympic results ticked across the bottom of the screen) was the imprint that melted away a summer of negative ads by both sides, and an inoculation against the negative campaigning to come among a particular demographic - Evangelical Christians - that in the past has been among the most vulnerable to such techno-marketing.
In 2004, among the 23 percent of voters that identified themselves as Evangelical Christians to exit pollsters nationwide, Republican George Bush received 78 percent of those votes to 21 percent for Democrat John Kerry: giving Bush a 13 percentage point advantage among all voters nationwide. McCain's not going to do better among Evangelicals than Bush: the question is whether Obama can cut into this most important part of what has been the GOP's base.
According to a Pew survey this month, McCain leads Obama among Evangelicals with 68 percent to 24 for Obama. That may seem marginally different than the 78-21 split between Bush and Kerry, but nationwide it's an advance of three percentage points for the Democrat if Obama can simply grab a similar one-quarter of the eight percent of undecideds in that subsample. Right there is the math for what could have been a Kerry victory over Bush in the national popular vote four years ago, and and what, if it occurs, will be an Obama victory in November.
So for Obama to have appeared at that forum, and been humanized by Warren in contrast to the attempts to demonize and attack his character to Evangelicals that have characterized the rival campaign, leaves the lasting impression among those that watched the forum on cable television.
Obama's open discussion of "faith" throughout the primaries, his use of "faith forums" in the Iowa caucuses and gospel concerts in the South Carolina primary, his tolerance (yes, that's the proper word for it) of religious views different than his own, and the intensive efforts (a la the Matthew 25 Christian group for Obama) to peel away Evangelical voters from the GOP base (particularly the younger ones) was grist for attacks on Obama from the identity-politics left during the primaries (remember the screeching, during the early primaries, over gospel singer Donnie McClurkin's views on homosexuality? Interestingly, so many of the same bloggers and commentators that slammed Obama then over his refusal to demonize McClurkin then are those that have today picked new complaints over what they see as Obama's unwillingness to demonize McCain in the ways they would prefer to see a presidential campaign run: it's as if some people don't know or can't even conceive of any other kind of presidential campaign than the ugly contests that produced Bush-Clinton-Bush).
Sure, the "Civil Forum" audience was mostly a McCain crowd, but in those 3,500 seats and among the million or more viewers via cable TV was part of that twenty-five percent or so of Evangelicals that, if Obama wins their votes in November, he will win the presidency.