From exit polls:
Attend Religious Services Kerry Bush
More Than Once a Week
Percentage of Electorate: 16 35% 64%
Once a Week
Percentage of Electorate: 26 41% 58%
A Few Times a Month
Percentage of Electorate: 14 49% 50%
A Few Times a Year
Percentage of Electorate: 28 54% 45%
Never
Percentage of Electorate: 15 62% 36%
Clearly, the more often people attend church, (which is at least one indicator of the political importance they place on their religious faith), the more likely they are to support Bush.
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Clearly, these statistics reveal that the way to gain votes for Kerry is to encourage people to attend church less. Thus, candidates should attend church less and talk about their faith less.
Perhaps Democrats should sponsor 12-step programs to wean people away from church attendance. We could cite the (real) studies showing that the more ardent one's faith, the higher the divorce rate. We could talk about the health hazards of people stuck in close proximity in closed churches in the winter (think of the germs!).
More than anything else, our political leaders should start to talk in anti-church attendance language.
Does that make you uncomfortable? Does it feel, somehow, inherently regressive and illiberal?
If it does, perhaps you understand how I and tens of millions of my nonreligious American peers, along with millions of our non-Judeo-Christian American peers, feel when folks (ab)use statistics to come up with equally bogus conclusions, equating correlation with causation, on the opposite side of the spectrum.
(NOTE: for the irony impaired, what the exit polls actually show is that religious ardor did not break for either candidate, it is distributed virtually evenly. And this is not the only measure to back that up. There is no indication that the Democratic Party lost more votes than it gained because Christians (the 77% majority, 100% monopoly in representation) "feel persecuted".
Thus, all this talk about how getting our candidates to talk up Jesus will win us these phantom folks who are dying to vote Democrat, but just can't because the Democratic Party is anti-religion, is just that, talk. It is not supported by the facts.)
What we need to talk about are actual, common, genuine, compelling progressive values, not make them sound like a Christian invention. And we need to reach out to those who are our natural allies in this struggle, moderate republicans and libertarians who share many of our values such as civil-libertarianism, social tolerance and fiscal responsibility, but who are alarmed at the theocratic, exclusionary language coming from the Far Right that has hijacked the GOP.
And we need to reach out to those progressives who feel there is no difference between the parties. You don't do that by sounding more like the GOP, particularly when mixing faith and politics.
You want to inspire liberal Christians who for some reason don't vote democratic? Talk about caring for the poor, the needy, the least among us, talk about equal justice, equal dignity, equal protection, individual right of self-determination, global cooperation, social safety nets.
Ooh, what a surprise - the exact same talk will appeal to nonreligious liberals as well.
Therefore, naturally we need to use divisive religiously-tinged language instead of inclusive language independent of faith.
Not.
Now, can we finally put this divisive, sectarian panicky post-election nonsense to rest, stop playing within Karl Rove's cognitive frame, and start thinking and talking like unified, proud, affirmative progressives?
Thank you.