It seems like an eternity since Senator Barack Obama’s winter of ascent. Remember the 12 consecutive triumphs? Remember Ted Kennedy and American University levitating off their moorings in Washington? Remember the 45-minute (!) victory speech on February 19th in front of nearly 20,000 delirious Texans?
But spring, as the jazz singers remind us, can really hang you up the most. March and April have brought with them some bad energy for the Obama camp. Was I the only one who saw an ominous portent in that cringe-inducing footage of some imbecile in Philadelphia hounding the Senator to pose for a picture and autograph his Cheese Steak? (Note to the Secret Service: the threat of being tasered is an exceedingly effective deterrent).
This has been the season of Rezko and Samantha Power and typical white persons and Reverend Wright and so much bitterness. As for the latter, the words are now well known. At a fund-raiser in San Francisco, Obama spoke of rural folks “cling[ing] to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations"
The irony is that those comments seem to fly in the face of everything Obama has stood for in this election. To claim that economic hardship (as opposed to profound, all-consuming spiritual conviction) leads people to cling to religion is so audaciously un-Obama. It is something we would be more likely to hear from Howard Dean or a New Atheist.
Indeed, at last week’s Compassion Forum Obama expressed incredulity that a person with his commitment to bringing faith back into the public square could be accused of elitism. “Nobody in a presidential campaign on the Democratic side in recent memory,” he pointed out “has done more to reach out to the church and talk about what are our obligations religiously.”
All true, but there is a less charitable reading of these remarks—one that will accrue to the greater good of the Clinton and McCain campaigns. Here, his comments were not a critique of religion, but religion as practiced by conservative White Evangelicals.
Now, it could be countered that this group wouldn’t vote for Obama anyway. Ergo, his comments in San Francisco may have been a foul, but caused no harm. But as I have been pointing out for months, a Democrat can’t lose nearly 80% of the White Evangelical vote (as did John Kerry in 2004) and expect to win the presidency. If Obama could reduce this number by, let’s say, 10% in battleground states he would have an excellent chance of defeating McCain.
Obama’s recent troubles may have dimmed that possibility. Tonight’s Pennsylvania primary may shed some light on what non-affluent whites (be they Protestant or Catholic) think of the Senator from Illinois. As for working class whites, they comprise 27% of the population of the Keystone State. Hillary, let it be noted, has carried this group in every contest save Wisconsin. And she accomplished this before the Wright and bitter flare-ups.
If the pattern holds in Pennsylvania the Clinton people will resourcefully equate electability with the capacity to garner working-class white votes. They will insist not only that Obama can’t win a battleground state, but that he is a McCain-Democrat monger. And if this reading prevails--which is not presently likely-- then the winter of Obama’s ascent could turn into the spring of his fall.
Watch Sally Quinn and I discuss the Pennsylvania primary on The God Vote This Week.
For more information about religion and the candidates check out Faith 2008 by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
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