Arrogant religious groups and intolerant religious leaders do damage to our democracy

One of the most damaging developments in politics over the past two decades has been the effort on the part of religious GROUPS to insert themselves into political ELECTIONS.

I'm not saying that INDIVIDUALS should not vote according to their consciences, nor am I saying religion is destructive when it is part of political discourse. What I do assert is that, in a religiously pluralistic society, it is dangerous to democracy when religious GROUPS insert themselves into ELECTIONS and endorse or condemn candidates, leading their members to believe they can only remain in favor with God if they vote according to their leaders' dictates. It is also extremely dangerous when leaders of one religion imply that America was founded in conformity with, and thus must adhere to, their dogmas.

Religious people have always and will always vote at least partially according to their values, and that is their right. But when religious leaders tell people whom to vote for, either directly or indirectly, or when they smear candidates, or when they blackmail candidates, or raise money for candidates, or falsely accuse candidates of persecuting them, in order to gain political advantage, they are crossing a line that the Founding Fathers did not want crossed.

When Karl Rove harnessed the power of churches and pastors to register voters to vote for a specific candidate, and hand out voting guides that instructed church members for whom to vote, he was crossing a line, as were tax exempt churches which legally must refrain from this sort of thing. When some bishops in the Catholic Church said they would deny communion to candidates who did not want to criminalize abortion, even though those candidates were personally opposed to the practice, and threatened excommunication to voters who voted for those candidates, they were crossing a line as well.

Two years ago, Barack Obama gave a speech in which he reached out to religious voters, but said we must find ways to create policy and agree on issues that go beyond religious arguments, because many American voters will not be receptive to such arguments. He said:

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do. But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise. It’s the art of the impossible. If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing."

These words of Obama reflect something I have been thinking for years. As someone who abhors the huge numbers of abortions in this country, and regrets the casual approach some have to the procedure, I share the values of some "pro-life Christians." But I don't share their solution, which is to overturn Roe V. Wade and criminalize abortion. There are many reasons for that, which I will not belabor now, but what I realize about the abortion debate is that it will not be solved with either the NARAL approach or the "right to life" approach.

Religious people want to argue on the basis of religious beliefs and secular people will never be persuaded by religious arguments. Even if the pro-life movement were to succeed in overturning Roe V. Wade and banning abortion, at least one half of the country would not be convinced. And the fight would continue. Obama is saying we need to find another way to discuss these things, and use both science and reason to find a compromise that will not be perfect, but might be better than continuing this endless animosity the two sides have for each other.

Today, James Dobson is using this two year old speech of Obama's to attack him and say he is "dragging Biblical understanding through the gutter" and has a "fruitcake interpretation" of the Constitution. Dobson is particularly irate about Obama using the example of abortion to call for a different kind of political discourse. Dobson is one of those who will not support a political candidate unless he professes the exact beliefs that Dobson and his followers do. As such, Dobson supported Bush, but abhors McCain. Even though McCain is "pro-life," he isn't conservative enough for Dobson, nor sufficiently anti-abortion. McCain would like to see Roe overturned, but he wants to return the choice of whether abortion should be legal back to the states. This isn't good enough for Dobson, who will not be satisfied until abortion is a crime everywhere.

Obama isn't just being attacked by the "Christian" Dobson, however. Muslim groups are also unhappy with Obama because he has not visited a mosque and is reluctant to publicly embrace Muslim voters. To those of us who have watched as the Republican smear machine, with a little assist from some Hillary supporters, have either pushed the lie that Obama was a Muslim or allowed people to falsely believe it, know how tricky this territory is for Obama. If he visits a mosque, pictures will circulate all over the internet "proving" that Obama is a Muslim.

Those Americans who are rational and educated know Islam is an ancient and honorable religion, but in this post 9/11 world, when millions of people have decided, with help from Dobson and the like, that the religion of Islam (and not just a radical sect of Islam) is an evil force that is responsible for killing Americans, Barack cannot do anything to allow this misunderstanding to continue, no matter how much he respects Muslims and wants them to support him.

Of course, if church and state remained completely separate, this might not be such dangerous territory. Barack's problems with those who drag religion into the public square is not limited to the internet rumor that he is a Muslim, nor critiques of his call for a dialogue that does not cater to fundamentalist Christians. As we have seen today, he is being attacked by a fellow "Christian" not just because some assert he is not the right kind of Christian, but also because he is apparently, not the right kind of American. (Groups like Focus on the Family have intertwined their brand of Christian orthodoxy with their brand of American orthodoxy.) Even though he is a Constitutional law professor, according to Dobson he has a "fruitcake" understanding of the Constitution, whatever that means.

And as we saw just a few months ago, Barack's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, was all the proof that the right wing smear machine needed to prove Barack was the wrong kind of Christian, one who sat in a respected Christian Church whose pastor dared to challenge the morality of some aspects of American governmental policy, a pastor who got a little too worked up, a little too emotional, a little too angry at what has been done to black Americans at the hand of the American government and the many southern "Christians" who used scripture to justify the horrifying treatment of African Americans.

Obama is in a no-win situation here, all because religion has become way too intertwined with politics and too many rigidly orthodox religious leaders don't seem to want to accept Obama's view that Americans of all religions and no religion must learn to talk with each other in a different way. Each religious group wants to be catered to in exactly the way they think they should be catered to. Each religious group believes its tenets alone are the word of God. Each believes America must conform to their interpretation of the Bible, which in turn colors their interpretation of the Constitution.

And herein lies the problem: since America is made up of peoples who profess many different faiths, many different versions of the various faiths, as well as people who profess no faith, all of whom are equal under the law and each of whom can cast only one vote, the citizens of America must learn to speak to each other in a common language, and that language cannot be the language of the Bible, the Torah, the Quran or any other religious text.

Once Obama takes the oath of office next January 20th, I hope he will follow through on the vision he offered in his speech two years ago. I hope his presidency is one in which the radical right religious leaders can be tamed and learn that it will be good for America, and good for them as well, if we can all learn how to speak to each other, not as people of God vs. people of the world, not as religious vs. secular, not as fundamentalists vs. modernists, not as conservatives vs. liberals, but simply as Americans, concerned not about implementing one or another interpretation of the Bible, the Torah, or the Quran in our laws, but about implementing the COMMON GOOD.

In such a world, perhaps we could stop criticizing and attacking each other, stop arrogantly insisting we alone know the real truth, and start finding ways to live in peace, with love and acceptance of all people, and with real "liberty and justice for all," no matter what faith anyone professes, or what anyone believes.

How on earth could God take issue with that?

Different arguments, different strategies, different times

In the democratic presidential primary, there are not just two candidates running for the nomination. There are two completely different arguments about how the winner should be decided.

I have been looking over some blogs this morning and it is apparent that those on Obama's side view the path to victory totally different than those favoring the Clinton campaign.

The Obama campaign has been working to pile up delegates according to the rules set down by the DNC. They are not just looking for state wins, they are looking for as many delegates as they can get within states, even states they lose (all of the states divide up their delegates according to weighted votes). They are not doing this (as far as I know) by cheating or demanding more than they have legitimately won, but by following the rules of the party. Because of the way the DNC rewards certain congressional districts within states, because of loyal democratic voting or other reasons, a candidate can actually win a state and lose the delegate count and vice versa. This may seem to the causal observer to be an unfair way to run a primary, but it is what the DNC laid down and what all the candidates knew going in. Obama is using the rules to his advantage.

Obama has also been trying to wrap up the contest by winning the most delegates, whether they come from caucus states or primary states. He does not see the delegates from caucus states as any less countable than delegates from primary states, nor it should be added does the DNC. Nor does he see the delegates from small states, or so-called red states, being any less important, as it is the overall delegate count that determines the winner.

Obama also wants to adhere to the rules laid down by the DNC regarding Florida and Michigan. The DNC, with the agreement of both campaigns, punished Florida and Michigan, as they said they would, because they moved their primary date up. Over the past couple of years, states have been moving their primaries up to an earlier date to have more of a say in who the nominee would be. My own state of California went from a June primary to a February primary for example.

My understanding is that the DNC was troubled by this development and we all saw Iowa and New Hampshire, who have traditionally been first, keep having to move their primaries up to stay in the first positions. The whole moving primary thing was getting ridiculous, so the DNC decided where the first four contests would be and asked all states to comply. When Florida and Michigan defied them, the DNC said they would not seat their delegates. This isn't because they didn't value the voters of Florida and Michigan, but because they were trying to put a halt to this "me first" contest in all the states and avoid fiascos in upcoming election years.

When the DNC made this decision, all the candidates were on board. All of the candidates (except Clinton and Dodd) took their names off of the ballot in Michigan, but Florida didn't allow that, so all the names remained. Furthermore, the candidates agreed not to campaign in these states. Obama has agreed to abide by the DNC's decision, although he says he would like to find a compromise by which the delegations could be seated.

Finally there are the superdelegates, those party officials who can also cast one delegate vote and possibly determine the winner of the nomination regardless of who wins the most pledged delegates. Obama has been trying to woo superdelegates as much as Clinton, and he is very aware that the superdelegates could vote for any candidate, including the one with the least pledged delegates. So far, he has not said anything publicly about wanting the superdelegates to abide by the will of the people, although some members of the party have said that.

In summary, then, Obama is moving forward trying to win as many delegates, pledged and super, as possible in order to secure the nomination. He is adhering to the rules, even though some believe those rules are unfair. So far, that strategy has served him well, so it is not difficult to stick to it. Obama is consistent. His message is trustworthy.

Hillary Clinton, who is currently behind in total delegate count, and most especially in the pledged delegates (those won in primaries and caucuses) has a very different strategy which operates on two fronts. One is to discount Obama's victories. The other is to emphasize "fairness." In neither of these fronts is she concerned about adhering to DNC rules.

Hillary and her surrogates have been discounting Obama's victories since he began winning them. In fact, this has become so obvious that some of the bloggers are writing parodies of her surrogates' attempts to downplay Obama's wins. So far, we have heard from Hillary's campaign that small state delegates aren't as important as big state delegates, red state delegates aren't as valuable as blue state delegates, and caucus delegates aren't as democratic as primary delegates. In other words, the delegates Hillary has won should count more than the delegates Obama has won. Of course, since the party rules are that a delegate is a delegate is a delegate, this is all spin and will make no difference in the final count.

What could make a difference in the final count is what what happens with the Michigan and Florida votes, and what the superdelegates ultimately do. Here again, Hillary has a different strategy.

While Hillary originally accepted the DNC rules regarding Michigan and Florida, she now talks about the "unfairness" of not seating the delegations. Since she "won" both contests, even though she was running against "uncommitted" in Michigan, and even though Obama had no chance to introduce himself to the voters in Florida, she now wants to change the rules in mid-game. There is a certain appeal to her argument, especially when she claims it is unfair to the voters of Michigan and Florida not to count their votes, but she is not looking at all at the fact that it was unfair to Obama not to be on the ballot in Michigan, and not to be able to campaign in Florida, where had he campaigned he undoubtedly would have done better. Her argument also makes sense in terms of giving her an advantage. Since she won both contests, however unfairly, she wants those delegates and the only way to get them is to convince enough people her "fairness" argument is valid and the DNC rules should be overturned.

As to the superdelegates, Hillary is counting on them overturning and thus dishonoring the popular and pledged delegate votes (which is an ironic twist considering her cry that the votes in Florida and Michigan should be honored). She hopes that by winning Pennsylvania and many of the remaining states, she will prove she has momentum and will be a better candidate than Obama. The only problem with this is that there is nothing in the rules about momentum. Yes, if the Obama campaign implodes, for which the Clinton campaign is praying, the superdelegates can be a safeguard to vote for a better candidate, but this would be extraordinary and could tear the party apart.

The superdelegates would only overrule the will of the people who have given Obama more votes, and put Hillary in as the nominee, if they really believed Obama was radioactive. Right now, in opinion polls, Hillary has higher negatives than Obama or McCain, and is seen as the least likely to unify the country. So all she may have going for her is momentum, Michigan, and Florida and they are all long shots. In addition, Hillary's mind-changing with respect to the DNC rules makes her look untrustworthy and inconsistent, as does her dishonest story about landing under sniper fire in Bosnia.

A presidential election campaign is really two things: a deadly serious business in which candidates' character, demeanor, leadership, and position on issues is evaluated, and a strategic game in which one side tries to outmaneuver the other with a variety of tactics and tricks.

Ronald Reagan was the last candidate who won on the first set of criteria. His character, personality, leadership style and conservative views (during a very conservative time) won the day. Since then, while Democratic candidates have generally had better positions on issues, candidates have either prevailed because of personality issues or through the use of tactics and (mostly dirty) tricks.

Bush I won because of dirty tricks against Dukakis while Bill Clinton won because of a combination of personality and Perot, who stole enough votes from Bush I to allow Clinton to win with less than 50% of the vote. Bush II won as we all know because of the dirty campaing and electoral tricks of Karl Rove.

This election, however, may be different. These are different times. The problems the country faces are enormous, and the man who became president because of dirty tricks has not only failed to solve them, he has created more of them. This time, a reliance on strategy alone may not work. The people are treating the presidential election of 2008 as deadly serious business and are in no mood, I believe, for another Rovian election season.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not very different when it comes to issues, however, so Hillary is trying to win with tricks and tactics while Obama, no novice when it comes to smart tactics, is playing by the rules and emphasizing character, leadership, and demeanor. After he nearly got thrown off course by the Rev. Wright controversy, he came back with a speech in which his loyalty, his honesty, and his calm demeanor won the day. People admired his courage in addressing a hot topic, and in not completely disowning his pastor. They liked his ability to talk in more than sound bites, to address them as adults, and to look at issues in a complex rather than simplistic good and evil way. After eight years of lies, overly simplistic arguments, and dirty tricks, the people find Obama refreshing, and too many are seeing Hillary Clinton as untrustworthy.

Even the choice of the Republican nominee is a testament to the fact that people have Bush and Rove fatigue and want more honesty, more character, and less dirty tricks. McCain, the so-called Maverick, is ahead in the polls right now, beating both Obama and Clinton, even though the people are clearly on the side of both Obama and Clinton when it comes to the issues. The people like McCain's demeanor and character, and the Republicans nominated him even though the so-called conservative base does not embrace him.

Ultimately, I think Clinton's tactics will not work. While her supporters have accepted and even promoted her rationalizations that the Michigan and Florida situation is unfair to voters, and that she is a better candidate because she wins in large blue states this is not accepted by a majority of voters. The voters know she signed on to the DNC rules and they also know that in large states like California, New York and Massachusetts, Barack Obama will defeat John McCain. Clinton wants to use a Bush-Rove strategy, winning by tactics and rhetorical tricks, and the voters who are not among her most loyal fans do not like it.

This is why today Obama is ahead of Clinton by 10 points, and it is why, once Obama is the official nominee and is pitted one on one against McCain, McCain's numbers will go down. And the sooner that happens, the better.

Karl Rove is laughing

Democratic voters in recent days have been dismayed to see Hillary Clinton, and her defender husband, the former president, in petty and dishonest battles with their political rival, Barack Obama. Being so critical of the Rovian tactics of the past two elections, we wanted our nominating process to be civilized and uplifting.

At first, we were thrilled to see our diverse field of candidates, especially when you compared it to the typical Republican field of all white males. We thought the problem we would have, when it came our turn to choose, was that there were too many good choices. Almost all of the candidates, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich who was always really the conscience of the group rather than a serious contender, were saying the same things and so our task was difficult. How could we decide which of these great candidates we wanted as our standard bearer when all of them were so good?

We would have to consider things other than their policy positions, which were all pretty much the same. Did we want to go with a former first lady and elect the first woman? Or might electing an inspiring and charismatic African American be the way to go? Did we want to be the generation to elect the first black president? How about a Latino who had much foreign policy experience and knew how to conduct tough negotiations around the world, or a former vice presidential nominee who would finally do something to help the forgotten people in the country?

We thought our dilemma was the best of all dilemmas.

We were wrong.

Because once the field narrowed, and the battle was between two firsts – the first woman and the first African American – it got emotional and ugly. And part of the reason it got ugly was that there was so much at stake, part was because the Clintons felt the nomination by all rights belonged to Hillary and should be easy to secure, and part it was because the specters of racism and misogyny were right below the surface, causing the candidates and their staffs, as well as the media and voters, to overreact and cater to their worst instincts.

Some may think these "overreactions" were deliberate, designed to turn voters against the other candidate, and perhaps they were. Campaigns have become highly calculated and staged psychological events, with advisors who know how to manipulate the emotions of the electorate so that we never really know what we need to know about whom we are electing. It could be said that Bush's entire 2000 campaign was an exercise in deception, with Bush pledging to be a humble, compassionate conservative who would be a "uniter." These, of course, were all words tested in focus groups and had no relation to the actual candidate Bush. It was the campaign tactics, not the candidate, that came out victorious in the 2000 election, and look what we got: eight years of hell.

The unfortuante reality is that the people are easily fooled by candidates who mislead them and appeal to some of their worst instincts. In this sense, a campaign is like a nationwide Rorschach test. The voters see what they want to see, only in this case it is also what the campaign carefully leads them to see. In recent days, the Clinton campaign has capitalized on two issues they knew would resonate with African American voters. Hillary inserted the words "slum lord" into the debate, and made sure she connected them to Obama, whose defense would take much more time than a debate or 30 second commercial could provide. She also took advantage of Obama's unfortunate reference to Ronald Reagan, who is hated in the African American community, and said that Obama praised his ideas (which he didn’t). Again, how does one explain that in 30 seconds? And once the lie is out there, it's impossible to take it back. As Winston Churchill once said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." Churchill did not know it, of course, but he was actually summing up current American campaign strategy.

For seven long years, we Democrats have been waiting for an opportunity to finally take back the White House. With George W. Bush's unpopularity, this seemed the year. Having the 2000 election stolen was devastating, because it led to a terrible and unnecessary war and tax cuts that have bankrupted the treasury. Losing in 2004 was damaging in other ways. Not only did the war continue, but the Supreme Court got two new ultraconservative members who are busy undoing many progressive reforms and laws. Losing in 2008 would be unthinkable. The Supreme Court could be lost for decades, war would continue indefinitely, poverty will deepen and more Americans will lose health insurance, and the corporate takeover of this country, with the further destruction of the middle class, might very well be completed.

Yet the candidates bicker and play games with the voters because, while they may have good ideas and may all make acceptable presidents, what they want most is to win. I am disgusted with them, of course, and with their tactics. I am mostly disgusted with the Clintons, because I think they are the ones who are the most manipulative and the most dishonest. I also don't think a former president should be out there attacking reporters as well as his wife's opponent, getting red in the face, and defending his wife, especially when he treated her so abysmally in a very public way eight years ago, and even more so because she should be showing us she is strong enough to do this on her own.

But I also blame the voters. Candidates continue attacking each other in dishonest and personal ways because they know it works with voters who are far less attentive to all the facts, and far more gullible than they should be, or perhaps, like the Rorschach test, they see what they want to see. For example, in a story on CNN yesterday, a voter in South Carolina said everyone she talks to brings up the "fact" that "Obama is a Muslim." Now anyone who has paid a modicum of attention to his campaign or the news knows that this is untrue, that Obama is in fact a Christian whose membership in a Chicago church is controversial because its minister has praised Louis Farrakhan. This story has been out for quite some time, yet there are still a large number of people who believe an internet smear that says Obama is a Muslim. Why do they believe it?

One answer, of course, is that they retain racist attitudes, but cannot express that in public, as it is not considered acceptable. So they latch onto something negative they hear about the black candidate and use that to reject him. It is still okay in this country to reject Muslims, so they believe that falsehood about Obama. And his having a Muslim sounding last name that rhymes with "Osama," and a middle name that is the same as that of the deceased Iraqi dictator, makes the smear easy to apply.

How sad that we live in a country where people can be fooled by candidates and opponents of candidates because they hear what they want to hear. How tragic that Obama's main opponent, a distinguished and capable woman, a woman who has always fought for civil rights for minorities, and whose white husband was once dubbed "the first black president," would attack the man who could REALLY become the first black president because she so desperately wants to be the first woman president. How sad that what once made me and so many Democrats proud to be a member of the Democratic Party now has us feeling helpless to stop the internal bickering of two highly qualified candidates who could each make history this November, but instead may send voters running to the party that has spent the last eight years running the country off a cliff.

Karl Rove couldn't have planned it any better.

Big Brother emerges from retirement

Most of my friends on the left have re-read Orwell's 1984 within the last five years and have noted the many similarities between the fictional world of Big Brother and the real world of George W. Bush, especially in the distorted use of words and language. The three slogans of Oceana, the fictional country in which 1984 takes place ("freedom is slavery," "war is peace," "ignorance is strength"), remind us of some of the titles of legislation offered up by the Bush administration ("clear skies initiative," "no child left behind," etc) which mask the real purpose of the laws. It doesn't require too much stretching to see how the Bush administration, with its mastermind Karl Rove (who just might qualify as the modern embodiment of the mythical "Big Brother"), learned how to distort language in order to fool the public.

The Bush administration also has a long history of distorting facts, as in the infamous WMD rationale for the Iraq War. Again, the truth is the exact opposite of what the administration tried to claim. And again, like the mythical country Oceana, which would be at war one day with Eastasia, and then the next day with Eurasia, with all references to the war with Eastasia gone from the public record, the Bush administration went to war in Afghanistan one day, and a few months later was at war with Iraq, with references to Afghanistan all but gone from the news. Likewise, just as Oceana was involved in a perpetual war that bestowed unlimited power on its leader, so George W. Bush has begun a permanent "war on terror" which he insists gives him unprecedented powers.

However, the blatancy of the lying has gone one step further with the re-emergence of Rove from his recent "retirement." Now Bush's Brain is blatantly rewriting history, accusing the Democrats of being the ones pushing for war with Iraq in the year 2002, when they were in fact the ones trying to delay a vote even as Rove's boss was preparing for a war he was determined to wage, even without a Congressional vote. Peter Baker of the Washington Post does a good job of proving Rove a liar by quoting former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer and former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card. According to Baker, Card said Rove's "mouth sometimes gets ahead of his brain" and Fleisher asserted "It was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress. I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong."

Now if we really were living in Orwell's 1984, Card and Fleischer, like Winston, the hero who rebelled against the mind control of Big Brother, would have their faces stuck in rats' cages to have their noses eaten off. But this is Bush country, 2007, and Rove cannot stop the news media and the Democrats from refuting his lies.

But it doesn't matter to Rove. He knows he doesn't have to use torture and thought police to be effective. In a country of couch potatoes and mindless consumers, and a media controlled by a few corporations who care more about profit than truth, all he has to do is get the lie out there, just like the Swift Boat ads, and he can create a stir. Even with a few reporters finally rebutting him, the lie is still there and some people will believe it.

Rove has always implemented a strategy of winning with narrow majorities. He doesn't have to discredit the Democrats with a large number of voters, he just has to fool or confuse enough people to allow his side to win. So he lies, the lie is spread on page one of the major papers, the media belatedly and unenthusiastically rebuts the story on page nine, and he has "catapulted the propaganda," as his great leader once said.

This has been the Rovian strategy for the past two presidential elections, and now that Rove no longer has an official job in Washington, he is free to make similar mischief in this election. And, so far, just as the citizens of Oceana were powerless to confront Big Brother, the Democrats do not have an effective strategy to fight him.

And that is very bad news for all of us.