And Clinton and Obama are combined in one sentence.  Why am I not surprised?

I guess Obama is an "institutionalist."  After all, the Church is an institution.

The way democracy has always worked in the past is that the people criticize politicians -- not the other way around. I'd say what the Clinton/DLC/ wing of the party is doing on a regular basis is stupid if I weren't convinced that they WANT Democrats to lose this year so Hillary can run against a GOP Congress in 08. The NeoDems once fooled all of the the people in the party, but no longer.

One of the woman I consider a hero in my life is a very devout Catholic and yet has been an active Democratic volunteer for more years than I've been alive.  This kind of talk is the reason I didn't become a democrat until a few years ago. Give them a deer standing ten feet away and they'll very carefully lift their gun, check the site...and shoot themselves in the foot.

Yeah, you run into it everywhere.  Like, the other day, I read some liberal tripe that said,

"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's."

And I thought, hey, that's really redundant, isn't it?  And anti-religious and elite, too!  Because, Caesar, nowadays, is our Fearless Leader in the flight-suit.  Rendering unto God or W is kind of the same thing isn't it?  So whoever wrote that must be some liberal elitist religion-hater.

Good for ol' Barack Obama, remindind us that religion is the God-approved way to increase your political influence over worldly things.

How do you know when you have pissed off a Unitarian?

The burning question mark on your lawn.

Way to reinforce the stereotype that liberals hate religious people.

Well, I do hate religion. That aside, isn't it just great when our polititians and political strategists come out and attack our own party? That's really gonna get us elected in 2006 and 2008. Yeah.

Of course when you have 90% of the people who strongly believe in anything unsbstantiated you have a problem when using REASON... add to this the emotional value of the issue and you have a problem.  

Unfortunately there's a big majority of Americans who would never vote for an atheist. Gosh, they would not even consent their daughter marrying one!

However, the best way to approach this is to frame the issue as "seperation of church-state for the preservation of both"!

The problem with the progressives is that they use too much reason, details, and longer arguments. Obviously this would be great if there weren't so many people out there who don't want to be ..confused and don't want to invest too much time & effort in examining a issue--especially when their frame is narrow and emotionally driven!

Great post.

I think the world of all of you, but this kind of talk (aside from the Unitarian joke) doesn't help a lot.  A lot of people do the right thing because Christ's teaching are radically liberal.  A lot of people do the right thing because they take a clear eyed scientific look at things and see what needs to be done.  I think deciding which of those two groups you are going to ally with is unnecessary.

I am coming to believe that the root cause of evil (although I hate using that word) is the separation we feel.  We separate our minds from our bodies, our survival from our environment, and one person from another based often on insignificant symbols.  We could be the political party of healing.  (Okay, too New Age.  Now I'm going to be labeled on of THOSE.)  We could let in the poor and the rich, all colors, religions, atheists included, everything.  And we could stop saying I'm right and they're wrong about things that do not alter our desired outcomes.  Just saying.  Arguing religion is kind of a waste of time.  

Dear God (intended), could someone take Begala out behind the barn already?

The local Kerry campaign had activists who were Catholic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Unitarian (if that counts) who were mortified as we had to explain to Jews, agnostics, atheists, Other, etc. that "we're not all like that" (referring to the fundamentalists to whom the Busheviks draw their support and cater to).  

Otoh, it gets more than a little annoying when a political colleague makes disparaging remarks about religion or religions in general, assuming that everyone else present has the same view.

There is a considerable fragment of the voting public that, for lack of better terminology, could called "Christian humanist" that is largely Democratic in political outlook.

Not all the Democratic problems in discussing religion lie with Barack Obama.  Many Democrats who can hair-split about fine distinctions among degrees of Progressive stances are totally opaque with respect to religion.

Least of all religious.

I don't hate religious people.  I just don't respect their fantasies, and I don't want them preached or paraded around me.  Obama is just another DLC triangulator.  They would sell their mothers into the coal mines if it would help them win an election.  This is why we need to keep CTG.  We need to scream that we are middle America, and we intend to take our party and our country back.  Back from Republicans, the DLC, God, liars and crooks, and elitist politicians.

If you are going to argue that Christ's teachings (the sayings atributed to him by people wh onever met him, decades after his death) are liberal, than you have to acknowledge the ones that are not. " Unless any one abide in me he is cast out as the branch, and is dried up; and they gather them and cast them into the
fire, and they are burned. " John 15:6

If you don't believe in him, you go to hell.

He also claimed not to be a man of peace, but to have bought the "sword"

He is also said to have cast a city into hell for not obeying him.

When you give Jesus authority on any thing, it is so much easier to also transfer authority to the Bible, which is unequivacally conservative. Finally, Religion is an inherently un democratic system ruled over by an autocratic monarch. It's existence polutes the nauture of our supposed democracy and inevitably empowers our conservative enemy.

Even the title of this thread is all wrong. Who cares what that weaselly little bitch has written? Worse than a wast of time even alluding to it.

As far as religion goes, you will never ever know anything about what I truly believe. If I say I am an atheist, that means I am devout. If I praise Satan, that means I am secretly pushing a Christian agenda. Telling you I am a "person of faith" means I believe in nothing whatsoever. Words about personal religion ordinarily mean very little.

Not only that, but this is a political blog, so while we might mention religion now and then, why make ourselves as idiotic as those people who voted for Bush thinking he was a "person of faith."

The fact of the matter is that there is an element of truth in what Begala says. Look at some of the comments on this site and others and tell me that some of them don't portray Christians as right-wing reactionary kooks.

Look, here is how it works: I am Christian. I don't expect everyone to be a Christian. I don't make fun of those who aren't Christians. I don't mock them, I don't belittle them, and I don't believe that they are any less intelligent than myself. What I ask in return is the same. I don't want to be mocked for being a Christian, I don't want to be belittled, and I don't want people to tell me that they are more intelligent than I because I have faith and they don't.

Instead of just having a knee-jerk reaction to Begala's comments, why don't you ask yourself why they are being made? This is the second day you have posted on this subject. You act as if Democrats question the way some progressives talk about Christians are no better than Republicans. Frankly, what seems to be happening is that some of the progressive blogs are adopting the same attitude as the DLC: we know what is best and we are going to belittle anyone who doesn't agree.

When a majority group like Religous people (some 85-95% of the population) claims that a minority group like secularists, Atheists or Agnostics (less than 5% of the population)is treating them poorly, I have to laugh. "Why won't you 3 million people stop opressing the 300 million rest of us!" Long and hard. And then cry a little. Atheists are among the most liberal demographic in this country, and the least liked (less than Muslims or Homosexuals). We're a reliable Democratic vote and the only thing we seem to be asking for, is that Religous people not pretend that their belief makes them better, more moral, more able to govern. Your belief does not make you more liberal or more democratic. It only seems to make you prone to lashing out at a tiny group of largely powerless people that the opposition equally derides. Good Job. Very Christian of you.

     A large part of the problem is that television producers have the choice of who is to be the spokesperson for Democrats. So we have dunces like Mark Shields, Donna Brazile, and Paul anything, speaking as the Voice Of The Denmocratic Party to the political naifs who take these programs seriously.

I think we need to get a lot of bumper stickers out, saying "I'm Christian, and I vote Democratic." If enough of those are seen, maybe it'll put this canard to rest. (I actually know many Christians who  are liberals---it's not that unusual.)

Good idea.  Many Christians are pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, pro-consumer, and for protecting the rights of the ordinary working man and woman against the corporations.  Besides being against Bush's idiotic policy in Iraq.

It's just not an interesting line for the media to observe and as a result many people who aren't religious Haven't A Clue.

Making public displays of religous belief a requisite for political success doesn't seem like a good idea to me.
Republican: I believe in God.

Deomcrat: So do I.
Rep: I believe in him more!
Dem: I believe the most!

That sure sound like a good way of elevating the public discourse. If you play by the same rules as the Conservatives they'll aways beat you. They invented the game.                      

Oh, making public displays of religion a requisite for political success is a horrible idea.   But so is knee-jerk hostility to religious practice, which is what happens in some quarters.  (My daughter is politically outspoken at a very liberal well-known pretty secular college in the Northeast...when it emerges that she's also a practicing Catholic, it causes confusion and brain-fusing among her peers.)

The assumption that all individuals who are religious are of the ilk of James Dobson or Ralph Reed, etc., is erroneous.  As is the assumption that all of any particular religious church-the-community are in agreement with church-the-hierarchy.  

A pro-Choice political position would pick up at least 40 percent support in our parish and might well carry a majority.  Furthermore, a substantial fragment of voters in our parish who are personally pro-Life would not make that the defining criterion for their vote.

I've read survey research (aka polling) data that suggests that there exists a substantial range of political opinion within even the evangelical Protestant churches as well.

As I read Obama and Begala, they are not suggesting that Democrats adopt Dobsonesque political positions in an attempt to curry favor with the fundamentalist GOP base, which I agree would be an exercise in futility as well as a betrayal of Democratic values.

But it's quite a different matter to stop being so ham-handedly awkward or hostile to non-secular voters a priori, often based on premises that are incorrect.

"But it's quite a different matter to stop being so ham-handedly awkward or hostile to non-secular voters a priori, often based on premises that are incorrect." How is the democratic party hostile to non-secular voters? I've tried to think of an example and can't come up with one.

Democrats don't have to engage in "religious" talk. All they have to do is to stand up for American values.

For example, fairness and liberty and justice for all.

If they want to use a Bible verse, use the one that's on the Liberty Bell - Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.

They don't need to do a John Kerry who said something to the effect that his religion taught him that faith without works is dead. That smacks of pandering.

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