Second Take: "The Party Faithful"

A slightly lengthier excerpt this time. Among the people given rather extensive treatment in "The Party Faithful" is Mara Vanderslice, who joined the Kerry campaign as religious outreach director. There are points in the book where even I found myself wondering if Vanderslice just wasn't getting the Colin Powell treatment in Amy's version of events. But the sad fact of the matter is that there is a divide among Democrats - between the professionals who place voters in a predetermined, yet limited number of boxes for the sake of understanding an electorate; and the voters themselves - who often turn out to be far more complex than the professionals would like to give them credit for.

There are certainly exceptions, but the inevitable pushback always comes in the form of prioritization. Sure, there may be evangelical, white Democrats out there. But the low hanging fruit, so to speak, is in the black churches, liberal religious organizations, and maybe Unitarians. If you think you'll ever live to witness an outreach to Unitarian churches, just wait a bit longer before you see any outreach to evangelical churches.

Well, again ... there are exceptions. The previous mention of Michigan party chair, Mark Brewer, comes from a mention of his outreach efforts. The except below offers some insight as to Mara's efforts:

(pg 134)

Begala was one of the operateives from the 1992 Clinton campaign who bitterly regretted the way pro-life Pennsylvania governor Bob Casey had been treated when he'd asked to address the convention that year. He would have been chagrined to find out that twelves years later the party rejected another speaker for not sufficiently passing litmus tests on cultural issues. This time, the unlucky sould was Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of the Willow Creek megachurch and the religious adviser who met monthly with President Clinton throughout his presidency. Given the growing influence of megachurches within the evolving evangelical community, Vanderslice thought the selection of Hybels to fill the slot set aside for prime-time remarks by a religious leader would be symbolically powerful. A Democrat, Hybels had endured signiificant criticism for welcoming Clinton to Willow Creek following the Lewisnsky scandal. He had also take a lead role in encouraging evangelicals to pay attention to issues of poverty and hunger.

When Vanderslice submitted Hybels's name to convention planners in Boston, however, a quick Internet search told them that he failed two crucial Democratic tests: the megachurch pastor was opposed to abortion and to gay marriage. "Absolutely not" came the word back from Boston.

Hybels's socially conservative views were a problem, but so was something else that couldn't be mentioned: his race. No one likes to talk about it, but the Democratic Party has for decades ghettoized religion, outsourcing it to African-Americans within the party. Democrats who give high-minded explanations for why they consider it inappropriate to mix religion and politics and why they don't approve of wearing religion on their sleeve don't bat an eye at politicians visiting black churches. Religion in black churches, they seem to think, isn't really religion. It's an ethnic characteristic of an important voting bloc.

Another oddity from this clip is the supposed litmus test of gay marriage. Odd, because it's not a position the Democratic Party itself favors - neither in its platform nor among its electorate. The only way to make sense of it is that such a position would rankle another - more prized - constituency group. I guess Donnie McClurken can forget about performing at the DNC Convention.

The upshot from Amy's narrative is that the situation is improving on the operational front. Mara Vanderslice now runs a successful campaign consultancy, populating the ranks of campaign pros who realize the Democratic electorate goes beyond the inner loops of urban demographic groups. Democrats with a strong, guiding, Christian faith are moving from the ranks of volunteers & donors to becoming candidates themselves. CNN is airing forums of Presidential candidates answering questions of faith. And those candidates themselves are learning the lessons of the past - be it from the mistakes of past campaigns or from the success of Bill Clinton's prior experience. In the next excerpt or two, I'll touch on that last one.