Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Jim Wallis has oft repeated the line that "The Bible mentions poverty more than 3,000 times." Well, I believe Wallis on that. But the Bible also fails to mention, as far as I'm aware, Nuclear power, antibiotics, automobiles, space flight, television, computers, the Internet, electric power, genetics, the typewriter, the printing press, condoms, modern contraceptive technology or stem cell research.

Merely noting that the Bible does not mention something does not constitute a clear position. Leaders of the Christian right have their reasons on why they want to criminalize abortion ( and, in some cases, many methods of birth control as well ). They work to see that their views get translated into legislation. In turn, politicians must decide to vote for or against such legislation.

Decisions must be made and and so it is not a viable position for Jim Wallis to merely skirt the issue. Wallis is not a legislator but he advises legislators, and unfortunately his style of avoidance has been adopted by the Democratic Party. Howard Dean and other Democratic Party officials have become fond of quoting Jim Wallis' "...3,000 times" times talking point, and for good reason - it draws attention to a central focus of the Bible and works to reframe Christianity as a religion of compassion and not hatred and anger. Well and good..

Now, if access to legal abortion and birth control technologies are deemed "off topic" issues by key Democrats, doesn't that suggest that the positions of the Christian right have in effect colonized the Democratic Party ? And, do the Democrats really want to become the "Conservative Biblical Values Lite" party ?

In terms of hard edged calculations, the Democratic Party may pick up "soft" pro life Democrats by waffling on abortion ( though it's unlikely to pick up any voters by not discussing efforts to restrict birth control ) and it may also  lose some voters who become disgusted about the party's stand ( or lack of it ) and just opt to stay home rather than vote.

The calculation seems to be that on the balance the Democratic Party will gain more voters than it loses by avoiding reproductive rights. Well, even if that is true in theory, in practice the gambit may well backfire : first, the Democratic Party stands to lose some of its most highly motivated activists if it waffles over reproductive rights and same sex marriage. Does it stand to pick up, on the other side of the equation, other motivated activists to compensate for the possible loss ? Probably not, and there's one wild card factor which likely does not get entered in to the calculations of analysts who advise the Democratic Party on shaping  its platform for vote maximization : character matters. As Talk To Action guest contributor Charley Blandy recently observed, voters often will opt for politicians who seem to show personal integrity regardless of stated positions:

it's a mistake to imagine that any particular set of policy positions will place the Dems in the midst of the largest clump of voters, and that therefore they'll win 50%+1. That's because wonky stuff, however nicely polled and focus-grouped, doesn't work on a national level: No one is smart enough to be able to evaluate policy positions one by one. And even if the proposals are popular, character (in the broadest sense) trumps all. All voters use professions of morality as a shorthand to evaluate how a candidate will act in office in general.

If leaders of the Christian right want to pass legislation against abortion and birth control, at the end of the day how will Jim Wallis advise politicians under his sway to vote ?  Waffling is fuzzy, but voting is binary. Yes, or no.

To the extent that Jim Wallis style of evasion gets enshrined as the sanctioned approach, voters may well perceive politicians who try such dodges as shifty. Would those voters be wrong ?