Democrats Find Religion…

And whoda thunk it…just in time for another major election! I can’t figure out if the tone of this whole article from Time (in partnership with CNN) is meant to be sarcastic, or if the authors are actually playing it straight. It’s kinda hard to tell with howlers like this:

The Democrats are so fired up, you could call them the new Moral Majority.

Good one!

This time, however, the emphasis is as much on the majority as on the morality as they try to frame a message in terms of broadly shared values that don’t alarm members of minority religions or secular voters.

Good luck with that, Democrats. It will be fun watching you try.

In this campaign season, if Clinton and Barack Obama and John Edwards are any measure, there will be nothing unusual in Democrats’ talking about the God who guides them and the beliefs that sustain them. Clinton has hired Burns Strider, a congressional staffer (and evangelical Baptist from Mississippi) who is assembling a faith steering group from major denominations and sends out a weekly wrap-up, Faith, Family and Values. Edwards has been organizing conference calls with progressive religious leaders and is about to embark on a 12-city poverty tour. In the past month alone, Obama’s campaign has run six faith forums in New Hampshire, where local clergy and laypeople discuss religious engagement in politics.

They’re all working overtime to figure out a way to capture that ever elusive “Religious Values” voter. You know, the type that the liberals make fun of when it’s not election season.

“We talk about ways people of faith have gone wrong in the past, (abortion?) what they have done right, (social justice?) and where they see it going in the future,” says his (Obama’s) faith-outreach adviser, Joshua DuBois.

Question: Faith Outreach Advisor?!

Speeches on everything from the budget to immigration to stem-cell research are carefully marinated in Scripture.

Are they fooling anybody?

… the Republican lock on Evangelicals may be breaking. The percentage of white Evangelicals who self-identify as Republicans has declined from roughly 50% in 2004 to about 44% this past February, according to Green. Now the number is closer to 40% as more Evangelicals choose to label themselves independents. “There is a loosening of the Republican coalition, particularly among people under 30,” Green says, “but it is not yet a movement toward the Democrats. It is a small but real change.”

The Democratic Party is rekindling its relationship with Catholics as well. For years, candidates dodged Catholics out of fear that abortion would dominate the discussion. Now Democratic leaders are pursuing alliances with the Roman Catholic Church on issues ranging from immigration to the minimum wage to Iraq.

Okay, here’s the key to raking in the Catholic vote, Dems. And I’m talking about the devout, church going Catholics, not the cafeteria variety that only go twice a year. You’ve already got a good portion of that vote. If you want to win the majority of the Serious Catholic vote you need to be good on the 5 non-negotiables: Abortion, Euthanasia, Fetal Stem Cell Research, Human Cloning, and Homosexual Marriage.

Good luck with that!

Catholic voters, Democrats realize, are the loosest swing vote in the spiritual cosmos, especially as the church has become more outspoken in its opposition to the war in Iraq.

Huh, I hadn’t noticed that the church had become more outspoken in its opposition to the war. But that’s beside the point. The fact of the matter is, Catholics are allowed to make up their own minds on whether or not the Iraq war is just. It’s not a non negotiable issue. But it is considered a sin to vote for someone who doesn’t have a good record on the non-negotiables, when a better candidate is available. And there’s always a better candidate available when a Democrat is involved.

Anyway, after five pages, the authors,  Nancy Gibbs, and Michael Duffy can only assert, “The lessons Democrats have learned here is that they can engage [Evangelicals] on these issues,” says former DNC chairman David Wilhelm. “We haven’t won ‘em over. But they are listening.”

Which means, they’re probably not going to win over any new religious voters, but we’re going to have to stock up on anti-nausea medicine watching them try.