A defender of Obama on Democrats and religion

Nathan Newman defends Sen. Barack Obama's speech on religion in Obama, Religion and the Blog Reaction TPM Cafe 06/28/06

Here's the thrust of his defense:

What's remarkable about some of the blog and other reactions is that folks seem to be talking about every policy other than the one Obama himself seemed to emphasize for change, which is progressive opposition to allowing prayer in public institutions. Opposition to prayer and other expressions of faith in public institutions is hardly a fringe position on the left-- it was decided by Supreme Court Justices and supported by liberal opinion editors for most of the last four decades.

Obama did not suggest changing progressive positions on abortion.
Obama did not suggest changing progressive positions on gay rights.

He suggested changing progressive positions on expressions of faith within public institutions such as schools.

That's the concrete proposal he made, criticizing those who hold out for a stronger version of separation of church and state.

I haven't done a survey of blog responses to Obama on religion.  But nothing Newman has to say in that post changes the position I expressed in my post yesterday.

Which is that Democrats can take positions on religion-related issues without  repeating key Republican talking points that accuse the Democrats of being somehow anti-religious.  I gave a couple of examples of that from recent times.

Or Democrats can take positions on religion-related issues and at the same repeat key Republican talking points that accuse the Democrats of being somehow anti-religious.  And by doing so, they give the Republican talking points a seeming validity they don't deserve.  And having Democrats endorse the Republican talking points is more useful to the Republicans than just another Republican repeating the Party line.  That's what Obama was doing, and that was the basis of my objection to it.

Pachacutec posting at FireDogLake in It’s Bill Clinton’s Fault 06/28/06 indulges in a little too much Clinton-bashing (liberal variety) for my taste.  But I agree with the substance of his criticism of Obama's speech:

The greatest victory of the radical right wing has been to train Democratic politicians to disrespect, mischaracterize and run against their base in the progressive movement. ...

First of all, there’s a very thriving religious left, thank you very much.  It’s absolutely false that Democrats and progressives disrespect or somehow fail to include people of faith.  All the establishment media fled YearlyKos before the very moving interfaith service on Sunday morning, because that was not interesting to them, and they had getaway flights to catch.  One of our leading Roots Project activists is a pastor in Massachussetts (home of the abolitionist movement), who delivered a knockout sermon that enlivened her congregation last weekend.

Pachacutec provides a link to the text:  We Are the Change 06/25/06 by Rev. Deborah Mero

And it's a bit harsh, but he also has a real point when he writes:

Idiots like Obama still think the path to power is to spin Karl Rove’s lies into oratorical gold to gin up support from people who would rather see him in shackles than see him in national office.

A good warning sign of something like this happening is when Democrats start making process points, i.e., "The Democrats need to pay more attention to ..."  If what completes the sentence is a common Republican talking point, then the person is normally just repeating a Republican talking point but trying to say "*I'm* not one of *those* Democrats".  If Democrats being interviewed on news programs get asked a "process" question about religion or whatever, they can actually help the Party's general image by talking about what the Democrats actually are doing and supporting that would be of particular interests to religious groups.

If they think the Democrats need to talk more about religion, or to do it differently somehow, then let them demonstrate their point by actually talking about religion in what they think would be the preferable way for Democrats.  Not just trash their own party by repeating the other side's polemical claims.