I guess it’s not enough that God’s sock puppet wins the election and increases his margin in Congress. Now, the hand wringing starts about how what the Dems should do is get religion. In the LA Times’ Election Reinforces U.S. Religious Divide, we get:
President Bush’s victory, the approval of every anti-gay marriage amendment on statewide ballots and an emphasis on “moral values” among voters showed the power of churchgoing Americans in this election and threw the nation’s religious divide into stark relief…. Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks by Edison Media Research/Mitofsky International showed clearly that the president draws much of his support from religious people… The president had the support of 78 percent of white evangelicals, 23 percent of the voters… Bush was favored by 61 percent of people from all faiths who attend services weekly; they made up 41 percent of the electorate. Democrat John Kerry drew 62 percent of Americans who never attend worship, but they only accounted for 14 percent of voters… When respondents were asked to pick the one issue that mattered most in choosing a president, “moral values” ranked first at 22 percent, surpassing the economy (20 percent), terrorism (19 percent) and Iraq (15 percent)… Gay marriage bans were handily approved in all 11 states that held referendums, and analysts said that issue drove up turnout…
More liberal believers, meanwhile, found the results deeply disconcerting, but also saw them as a call to action. “This election confirmed that we are a divided nation, not only politically but in terms of our interpretation of God’s will,” said the Rev. Robert Edgar, a former Democratic congressman and general secretary of the National Council of Churches. The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State put it more starkly. “The culture war may go nuclear,” he said, as “millions of Americans oppose the theocratic agenda of the Religious Right.”
The problem, said Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine, is that too many fellow liberals are “trapped in a long-standing disdain for religion and tone-deaf to the spiritual needs that underlie the move to the right.” They need to shed a core belief that Bush voters “are fundamentally stupid or evil.”
The election shows that Democrats in 2008 “are going to have to say they are religiously attuned to America and make it stick and make it authentic,” said Michael Cromartie, an expert on evangelicalism at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “All future political consultants are going to have to understand religious sensibilities as part of the resume.”
Screw you; ain’t no way I’m giving up my belief that they’re stupid, evil, or often, both. When do we stop trying to beat the right by becoming them?
And while I’m at it, here’s a bit from CBS’s Should Democrats Get Religion?:
The Democratic Party’s sharp defeat in the 2004 election has already produced a round of soul searching… Now some in the party are saying that the Democrats need to reach out to these voters with a faith-based appeal. “I don’t hesitate to stand up in a crowd and express how important faith is in my life. It is important to be able to express that in a way that is believable, and Democrats have to get comfortable doing that,” Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., told the Washington Post… Congressman Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., a former presidential candidate, told the New York Times that Democrats had failed “to speak to our faith, and to relate to people that we share their faith.”
Man, I wish I had a decent job waiting for me in Canada. I think we’re going to see some serious acceleration in the descent into theocracy in the next four years. Atheists of Amerikkka, get ready to become the niggers of the 21st century.
This one is making the rounds round “the internets”. My own suggestion had been to secede and become the Separated Coasts of America, but I could go with this one too.