Why is the Religious Right on the Right?

[Don Corleone]

For the record, the Democratic coalition has a good pitch it could make to Christians. There's much in their platform that were they willing to 'talk the talk', would play well. But Democratic politicians have to walk a very, very fine line. Too much mention of religion, and they'll turn off a large portion of their coalition, that believe any mention of God at all by a politician violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

But messages that Democrats could present:

-Stewardship of the environment
-Providing for the finanically downtrodden at the governmental level.
-Non-interventionist foreign policy.
-A "love the sinner" approach to social issues (Republicans tend to focus more on the "hate the sin" part).


One exception to the "Leave God out of the Democratic party" tradtionally has been among African Americans, who when numbers are counted, tend to be much more reliable church-goers than whites, particularly white Democrats. The Democratic coalition tends to give them a 'free pass' on that. This is one of Obama's great values as a candidate. He CAN bring Jesus into the discussion from the Blue side and not be ridiculed by his own followers. It will be very interesting to see what affect that has on religious conservatives in America among lower income to lower-middle income families. Until now, they have been forced to choose between voting with their wallets or voting with their prayer books. It's not lost on me, so I'm sure it's not lost on his campaign managers that Obama offers a way for them to step outside of that dichotomy for once.