A peculiar American Christianity

An article from a few years ago considers the glaring absence of the majority of white Southern Evangelicals from the Civil Rights movement, in contrast to mainline Protestants, Catholics, Jews and others.

What is it about southern evangelicalism that prevented those churches historically from seeing the plight of blacks as connected to the Gospel and the command to love God and neighbor? Maybe there is a real deep theological flaw in what is known as “evangelical theology?” Maybe the evangelicalism of the 1940s, 50s and 60s did not really understand the Gospel as clearly as many are lead to believe. I honestly do not have the answers to these questions but if evangelicals were so blinded by these issues during the Civil Rights Movement it makes me wonder what evangelicals might be missing today.

The Rev. Giles Fraser, writing today:   (Emphasis mine)

For his inauguration, Trump has chosen two proponents of what is called the prosperity gospel to say the prayers. Paula White – once investigated by the Senate finance committee for her business dealings – is a TV evangelist, noted for her belief that faith makes you rich. And Detroit bishop Wayne T Jackson, who holds that “Donald Trump is an example of someone who has been blessed by God. Look at his homes, businesses, his wife and his jet. You don’t get those things unless you have the favour of God.” Being “blessed” has become a moral alibi for America’s greed. It is a nauseating smile of faux-gratitude that says: God gave this to me so it’s not about me having too much. 

Even traditional evangelicals are angry about Trump’s prayer picks. But American popular religion has been sailing in these dangerous waters ever since it borrowed from the late 19th century New Thought philosophy, developing ideas about the power of the mind and its importance to success. Bringing together Christianity, capitalism and cod psychology, and transforming preachers into motivational speakers delivering their sales pitches, evangelicals such as Peale re-imagined the life of an itinerant Jew who thought you couldn’t serve God and money, to be that of a poster boy for the super-rich. And at Trump’s inauguration it is this false Jesus, this king of Mammon, that is to be worshiped and showered with gold.

Oh, the irony!

Dontcha love it that the stallwart white voters who put Trump into office to effect change, managed to give the whole government over to the establishment Republicans? 

If they voted for Trump because he was anti-establishment, boy have they been conned. 

What Trump tapped into was their sense of powerlessness, that unseen forces are pulling the strings and manipulating “the system” for their own benefit. That “system” encompasses everything from politics to the economy to their local schools to culture. The system made that factory leave town. The system lets immigrants come in and speak a language other than English. Everywhere you look you’re being held down by the system. 

Yeah, but turns out that the System is exactly who won.  

The wealthy and powerful will have more wealth and power when he’s done, not less. There’s a lot that Trump will upend, but if you’re a little guy who thinks Trump was going to upend things on your behalf or in order to serve your interests, guess what: you got suckered. 

I wonder how many of those voters use Medicare?  Because thanks to their vote, Paul Ryan is now on track to eliminate it.

Republicans hope to repeal Medicare — the single-payer system that most seniors rely on to cover their health costs — and replace it with a voucher. This voucher will cover some of the cost of inferior coverage that will leave seniors with higher out-of-pocket costs than they would have paid under traditional Medicare. As a bonus, the total cost of paying for an individual senior’s care — that is, the government’s share of the costs plus the individual’s share — could rise as much as 40 percent.

Inferior coverage at a higher price — that’s the Republican health plan. And it will become law unless three of the 52 Republican senators who will come to Washington in January decide to stop it.

Ironically, it sounds a lot like Obamacare.

Expecting tax breaks?  Don't. Trump's  "commitment is to be of service to that most oppressed and forgotten group of Americans, the wealthy. Trump’s tax plan would give 47 percent of its benefits to the richest one percent of taxpayers."

I wonder how many of them use Obamacare?  Because the Republicans campaigned on its repeal and that's likely to happen, at least in parts.  The mandate and subsidies will go away, insurance rates will skyrocket, and "the changes could lead to the end of the individual health insurance market."  Yeah, that'll be helpful.

How about improved jobs and economic outcomes?  Not gonna happen for the working class.

....there is very little reason to think that any set of policies could meaningfully reverse the long-term decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs. That decline has been driven by a combination of globalization and automation — forces that aren’t likely to reverse any time soon. ...Trump had little to say about education, job training, entrepreneurship or other policy areas that might help workers in rural areas. And though Trump has said that lighter regulation will help the struggling coal industry, that will do nothing to change the low natural-gas prices that are coal’s biggest enemy. Indeed, Trump has also pledged to ease regulation of fracking, which will tend to boost oil and gas production, which will in turn tend to keep prices low. (Clinton, it is worth noting, had a detailed plan to help coal country, although many experts were skeptical about its effectiveness.)

 Yup, so all those things they supposedly cared about, aren't going to happen for them.

Perhaps its enough for them to think of registering Muslims   or reversing LGBT rights or deporting DACA children.

In the end, regardless of what they thought they were voting for, what they are going to get is a polarized, racist country that gives more tax breaks to the elites and puts the white working class further into the poorhouse. 

If we weren't all on the same sinking ship, I might enjoy a little schadenfreude at that.

Indeed, a further irony is that as a white latte-sipping coastal elitist with a decent job and income, I'm likely to do quite well under Trump, at least economically.  But I voted against him, and against the R's, because economically I'd rather pay more taxes and have a decent country that provides health insurance and free education, than one that's a game of  Survivor.  (That's not even considering the disaster he promises to be on social justice, or civil and reproductive  rights!)

Right now, it's all hands on deck to rescue the Republic from itself.  As David Frum tweets,

If you want to save the country, you have to work with people you disagree with on almost every ordinary political issue. 

SO let's get find the sensible Republicans and get to work.

Now what?

The media, which was complicit in the rise of Trump, is now working hard to normalize him. 

But there is nothing normal about appointing a leader of the "Alt-Right" (which means, white supremacy) to a senior staff position.

As David Leonhardt writes,

His appointment is a violation of American values, period. As John Weaver, the Republican strategist, said on Twitter: “Just to be clear news media, the next president named a racist, anti-semite as the co-equal of the chief of staff. #NotNormal.”

But Leonhardt goes on to note that we have a balance to strike.  Because, like it or not, Trump is the duly elected president and we have a democracy to preserve.

But if official Washington should be tough enough to avoid normalizing the Bannons of the world, Trump’s opponents should be smart enough to avoid Bannonizing any sign of normalcy.

This will be hard, I realize. It will be hard because people are angry and worried. It will be hard because every shift by Trump away from his campaign rhetoric will seem hypocritical. In fact, it will often be hypocritical. But hypocrisy is better than authoritarianism.

So, we have to be strategic.  Get the anger out of the way, and be realistic.  And here's the real lesson. We cannot be pure. We must be Americans, first.

There are two kinds of issues now: those worthy of passionate, ideological debate, and those that must unite left, right and center at a dangerous moment. “If you want to save the country,” tweeted David Frum, the strongly anti-Trump conservative, “you have to work with people you disagree with on almost every ordinary political issue.”

Do you hear that, left wing?  No ideological purity here.  First, save the Republic.  (Unfortunately that's not something the left/progressives are very good at.  How many of them didn't vote, or voted for Stein, to keep their hands clean?  The blame for this disaster rests strongest on those.)

Leonhardt finishes up by putting this upon the GOP

Perhaps the most important figures now are the Republican leaders who voted for Trump. They are planning the legislative changes they will be making, as is their due. But they also have a patriotic duty — a duty to stand up for pluralism, equality, tolerance of dissent and the rule of law.

They have a duty to encourage Trump toward those values and, in the case of Republican senators, to block any nominees who violate them. Republicans often like to describe themselves as defenders of freedom. We need them to live up to that ideal.

I guess we'll see, won't we?

The First Steps

Michael Moore, whether you love him or hate him, nails the next steps:

Morning After To-Do List:
1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.  

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn't let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must "heal the divide" and "come together." They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.  

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn't wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that's about to begin.  

4. Everyone must stop saying they are "stunned" and "shocked". What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren't paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all "You're fired!" Trump's victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.  

5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: "HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!" The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don't. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he's president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we'll continue to have presidents we didn't elect and didn't want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there's climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don't want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the "liberal" position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen (see: #1 above). 

Let's try to get this all done by noon today.
-- Michael Moore

After the deluge

...what then?

Words fail to describe our horror this morning at finding that Trump has won the electoral college (but not the popular vote).  We clung to each other in tears and fear.

White identity politics won.  Racism won.  Sheer nihilism won.  The desire to throw something through a window won.  Democratic incompetence, bad planning and a flawed candidate handed the election to Trump.

And incalculably much has been lost.

The Guardian editorializes:

Four particular fears now stand out. The first is the unleashing of an unbridled conservative agenda in Washington, now that the Republicans control the White House and Capitol Hill together for the first time in 90 years. Mr Trump and the congressional Republicans have differences; he is more prepared to use the power of government than many of them are. But they have a clear path now towards reshaping the supreme court and dozens of lower-tier judicial benches in their own image. The effect on race, gender and sexual-equality issues is likely to outlast Mr Trump’s period in office. The culture wars will reopen. Abortion rights are threatened.  

 The second is the impact of this result on race in America more widely. Mr Trump campaigned against migrants and against Muslims, insulted black and Latino Americans, launched ads that some saw as covertly antisemitic, and was cheered to victory by every white racist in the land. His voters will want him to deliver. Every action he takes in this area threatens to divide and inflame. After a half century of uneven but undeniable racial progress in America, the consequences of every attempt to turn back the clock could be dire.  

 The third fear is whether Mr Trump has any economic plan that will deliver for some of the poor communities that gave him their votes so solidly. Mr Trump connected with the anger that many poor and white voters feel. But what can he do about it? What do most congressional Republicans care about it? He can try to put up all the protectionist walls he likes. But it seems difficult to see how he can bring old mines, mills and factories back to life. A lot of Americans feel left behind and let down. But Mr Trump is playing with fire if, in the end, it becomes clear that he has used their anxieties to advance himself and his own urban rich class yet again.  

 The final fear, though, is for the world. Mr Trump’s win means uncertainty about America’s future strategy in a world that has long relied on the United States for stability. But Mr Trump’s capacity to destabilise is almost limitless. His military, diplomatic, security, environmental and trade policies all have the capacity to change the world for the worse. Americans have done a very dangerous thing this week. Because of what they have done we all face dark, uncertain and fearful times.

False Equivalence and internet hysteria

Social media is full of links to sites with hyper headlines.  Clickbait, they call them.  Did you see what Hillary did?  The Republicans said this!

Most of these have no interest in discussing ideas, or facts, but rather in driving clicks, eyeballs on adds, and fomenting partisanship and division.  Just STOP IT.

If you are forwarding these you are contributing to that air of hysteria. 

These false equivalencies do not help our discourse. Whether you are a Bernie conspiracy theorist or a Republican gun advocate.

Recently, Donald Trump implied that the election of Hillary Clinton could justify armed insurrection.

I have two thoughts on this.

First, this goes to a long history of the Right attempting to "nullify" elections that they lose.  They did this with Bill Clinton, they have certainly done it with Obama, and now they are trying to pre-empt Hillary.  Over at Washington Monthly, Nancy Le Tourneau calls this the Conferderate response:  the effort to de-legitimize this challenge to their world view. If the election didn't go to my guy, it can't be legit. 

Second, this has prompted my right-leaning friends to post clickbait saying, essentially, Oh Yeah?  The Dems did it too!

No, the Dems have never called for armed insurgency if they lose.  But from Sarah Palin's gunsight ad, to the lynching memes ever since Obama was elected, to Republican officers sending around threats against Hillary, to rallies calling to "Kill the B....." , Trump has now escalated to an anti-democratic strong-man dictatorship.  Don't like the results of the election?  Take up arms!

Oh yeah? In 2008, Hillary called for Obama's assassination!  

No, she didn't. In an admittedly insalubrious choice of language (for which she apologized), she justified staying in the primary race in case something happened to him,  invoking the assassination of RFK in 1968.  You can go Google Robert F Kennedy.  I'll wait. 

She did not threaten an armed insurrection if Obama won.

She did not tell sober gun owners to take up arms against the government, including  against the police. 

She did not imply that the popularly elected president is illegitimate as commander  in chief. 

This unreasonable hatred of Hillary (Hillary Derangement Syndrome) fomented by one wing of our media is dangerous to our democracy. You don't have to like or agree with her.  But don't claim that the extreme language from the Trump side is in any way equivalent, or justified.    Argue the issues, not the hysteria.  And stop contributing to it. 

Trumpism and the end of the GOP

Andrew Sullivan on the first night of the Republican Convention:

The degeneracy of conservatism – its descent into literally mindless appeals to tribalism and fear and hatred – was on full display. You might also say the same about the religious right, the members of whom have eagerly embraced a racist, a nativist, a believer in war crimes, and a lover of the tyrants that conservatism once defined itself against. Their movement long lost any claim to a serious Christian conscience. But that they would so readily embrace such an unreconstructed pagan is indeed a revelation. 

If you think of the conservative movement as beginning in 1964 and climaxing in the 1990s, then the era we are now in is suffering from a cancer of the mind and the soul. That the GOP has finally found a creature that can personify these urges to purge, a man for whom the word “shameless” could have been invented, a bully and a creep, a liar and cheat, a con man and wannabe tyrant, a dedicated loather of individual liberty, and an opponent of the pricelessly important conventions of liberal democracy is perhaps a fitting end. 

This is the gutter, ladies and gentlemen, and it runs into a sewer. May what’s left of conservatism be carried out to sea.

Racism, fascism, wrapped in the flag....

In North Carolina, a tow truck driver refused to aid a disabled woman because she had Sanders stickers on her car.   And because he's a Christian.

Shupe, a 51-year-old from Travelers Rest, South Carolina, was very serious. “I’m a conservative Christian, I’ve just drawn a line in the sand,” he said. “I’m not going to associate or conduct business with them.” 

Right, because Jesus would decline to tow a Sanders supporter, a woman.  This is the same as the bogus "religious freedom" that wants to legalize discrimination against gays.

Of course, he's a Trump supporter.  Welcome to The Donald's America, us vs them, as long as "us" is not women, not minorities, not gays, not disabled, not Muslims.   

One of the very scary things about Donald Trump is how he has emboldened the separatists, which culminates in open racism. Indeed, this is probably the scariest thing.  White supremacists are emboldened by Trump, they call him their own.  And he won't disavow them, or the KKK.

David Duke, notable supremacist, hopes that Trump will "dispose of the Jews".  Right out there.  Breathtaking.   This is the 1930s.

Let's be clear,  This isn't just any election.

You cannot view this election solely as a choice between two platforms, two parties, or two personalities. This election is about much bigger issues. It’s about the way way we look at people, and talk about them, and care for them. It’s about the soul of America and its relationships to the world. If you care about that, you cannot vote Trump, or stay home, or vote for a third party spoiler. 

How can this man, who has fomented so much anger and hate, represent the United States to the world, and to its own people? How will minorities feel safe in the U.S. if he is president? How can this country stand to be even further divided? The chasm is already too wide. 

This isn't about politics.  This is about extinction.  Andrew Sullivan writes, in a new article entitled "Democracies end when they are too democratic"

In the wake of his most recent primary triumphs, at a time when he is perilously close to winning enough delegates to grab the Republican nomination outright, I think we must confront this dread and be clear about what this election has already revealed about the fragility of our way of life and the threat late-stage democracy is beginning to pose to itself.... 

For Trump is not just a wacky politician of the far right, or a riveting television spectacle, or a Twitter phenom and bizarre working-class hero. He is not just another candidate to be parsed and analyzed by TV pundits in the same breath as all the others. In terms of our liberal democracy and constitutional order, Trump is an extinction-level event. It’s long past time we started treating him as such.

It's not about Sanders vs Clinton.  It's about Trump the fascist vs the future of our Republic.

THEM

In this fevered political season, the emotions are running dangerously high.

I made the mistake of making a measured and technical comment about primary rules in a discussion thread and immediately was jumped on by a number of people (rabid Sanders fans, in this case) who essentially accused me of being a shill for the DNC and a corrupt part of every political problem we face.  All I made was a factual statement about rules;  I didn't say I agreed with them, nor indeed whom I support.  This personal invective was striking against a total stranger who, based on the site involved, is like to be a fellow Democrat.

(Except, as a number pointed out, they are not Democrats.  They want to choose the Democratic candidate, but they don't want the contamination of being in the Democratic party.)

This angry other-ness appears to motivate many of Trump's supporters, too.  For the anti-establishment campaigns, it's US vs THEM, although the THEM differs between the two camps:  Hillary supporters, establishment figures, Muslims, gays, poor people, or anyone who might be some of those....

YOU PEOPLE.  YOU WHO BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY THAN I.

What everyone seems to forget is that we don't get to live in a country of people who agree with us.  We live in a messy, divided country, pretty much split down the middle, where we all have to get along.  And that means we can't be righteous purists.  We need to compromise all the time, give a little, get a little.

That's how our government used to work, before a Republican majority decided that their role wasn't to govern, but to oppose President Obama.  Before the right wing bloviators decided that the goal wasn't to move ahead, but to de-legitimize every Democrat.  Before we developed hyper-partisanship into a religion.

Oh, and the left isn't immune from this.  Think of the last couple of  years, with protests on campuses against speakers who didn't pass a left-wing purity test.  I mean, I don't support Condoleeza Rice's politics at all but there is no question she is an accomplished woman,  who played an important role at a crucial point of history.  But she was too impure for Rutgers students in 2014.

And the isolationists-- the "Bernie or Bust" folks who wouldn't soil themselves by voting for Hillary--  they are part of the problem. They have become nihilists intent on destruction, careless of the collateral damage.   And voting for the Green Party is actually voting for Trump, or Cruz, and negating any chance of progressive values actually getting enacted.

Look at the difference of the right and the left this way.  When the right wing got passionate, they worked within the Republican machine, created the Tea Party, and have successfully (in a manner of speaking) pushed their agenda into the GOP,  with seats in Congress sufficient to bring down a Speaker.  I don't like the Tea Party politics at all, but hat's off to how they organized and gained power.

Alas,  the progressive wing of the Democratic party  deals with disappointment differently.  They are pure, so they go away and vote Green, which hasn't a chance of winning.  Sorry, there are just NOT ENOUGH progressives to win an election by themselves.  But, as we saw with Nader and Gore, there are enough votes lost to turf things over to the Republicans.  And that Cheney thing worked out SO well, didn't it?

Still, if you want to move the Democratic party leftward, you have to elect better Democrats.  You also have to do the hard work of local elections, down-ticket elections, putting a Congress in place that can actually act on some of these grand ideas. You can't be pure and take your marbles and go home if you want actually to effect change.  You have to work with people like me.  I am not a progressive --but I am a liberal.

And just a word: personal insults and ad hominem attacks against strangers on the internet are a great way to turn off potential allies.

Evangelical meltdown

Trump is doing very well among self-defined Evangelicals, to the dismay of leaders in that community . Southern Baptist Russell Moore views this with concern, and re-brands himself

For years, secular progressives have said that evangelical social action in America is not about religious conviction but all about power. They have implied that the goal of the Religious Right is to cynically use the “moral” to get to the “majority,” not the other way around. 

This year, a group of high-profile old-guard evangelicals has proven these critics right....
you will forgive me if, at least until this crazy campaign year is over, I choose just to say that I’m a gospel Christian.

Sarah Posner defines them as Trumpvangelicals.

As Trump's positions on deporting undocumented immigrants and banning Muslim immigration hardened through December and January, his support among white evangelicals grew, culminating in his victories in many evangelical-heavy states, including South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia. ....Schenck readily acknowledges the link, too, between gun worship and race. Evangelicals, he has told me, are driven by fear of a president they think "might be a crypto-Muslim" as well as black-on-white crime....Trump appears to have tapped into the disaffection among neo-Confederates and white supremacists, who can be counted among Trumpvangelicals 

So is it all down to race?

Very rarely have white people been willing to completely choose faith over loyalty to the race. White supremacy props up in this country and when the American dream has more to do with power and wealth and possessions than generosity, kindness, and equality, it makes sense that evangelicals, who want that dream for themselves, make Trump their main man.

And the Evangelicals define politically, not religiously

Maybe, just maybe, the conservative movement has spent so long politicizing religion that Evangelical voters are willing to forgive heresies as long as the politics match. Maybe, just maybe, self-described Evangelical conservatives are flocking to Trump because “Evangelical” in the context of American politics now has less to do with religion and more to do with conservative identity signaling. This may be baffling for members of the Evangelical establishment, who may really be Christian first and Republican second, but it jives with an electorate that is, if anything, Republican first and Christian second.

An NPR story confirms, it's not just about religious identity, but a toxic mixture of racism and bullying.

So what is motivating the evangelical voters who are supporting Trump if it's not their faith? One recent study suggested that the best predictor of support for Trump is a preference for authoritarianism, a belief in the need for aggressive leaders. Trump's candidacy is also associated with hostility toward minorities. Some conservative Christians can seem judgmental, but Russell Moore insists there is nothing in the New Testament that, in his words, gives any space for hatred and bigotry. 

Posner again:

[F]or the first time in memory, conservative Christians have been sidelined in the Republican Party by another religious movement. The Trumpvangelicals show that, even for values voters, which values matter can change a lot.

And in the Guardian,  Giles Fraser nails it:

 But what the Donald Trump phenomenon reveals is what several intelligent Christian observers have been saying for some time: that a great many Americans don’t really believe in God. They just believe in America – which they often take to be the same thing. God was hacked by the American dream some time ago. “The evangelical church in America has, to a large extent, been co-opted by an American, religious version of the kingdom of the world. We have come to trust the power of the sword more than the power of the cross,” writes Gregory Boyd in The Myth of a Christian Nation.

WWJD?

So now what?

The Republican blogger GOPlifer looks in his crystal ball.

There remains a significant possibility that the party exercises its own revolt at the convention; a revenge of the establishment. This ‘Red Wedding’ scenario could see the party purge the insurgents entirely, putting someone like Rubio at the top of the ticket and giving the far right the finger. There is only one reason to do this – because Bernie Sanders is winning the Democratic nomination.

If Clinton is sailing away with the Democratic nomination, the Republicans have no reason to risk the damage of a purge. No Republican is going to beat Clinton and Republican insiders generally understand this. If Clinton is the nominee then they have every reason to let Cruz (but not Trump) take the nomination and lose in a landslide.
A Sanders nomination changes the logic. That race becomes not only winnable, but a near-lock for any Republican who isn’t a raving idiot. Republican insiders will be alienate Cruz’s supporters, daring them to sit out the race and elect a socialist. Sanders is just what Republicans need to restore a little pragmatism to their electorate.

Look, I get that Bernie appeals to idealists.  But here's the problem.  He has no practical sense of how to implement the change he advocates, except somehow touchy feely stuff that the voters will rebel and everything will change.  Well, the voters DID rebel and we got the Tea-party.  Plus Dems never come out in the midterm elections.

Moreover, he has some policy proposals that do not make sense.  He has no clear road map on his single payer health care plan, he proposes across-the-board tax increases.  And frankly I don't see him winning in South Carolina or other states.

So, what?  If he's the nominee I'll vote for him, but he's just not going to pull in the disaffected and sensible Rs, and there aren't enough progressives to win the presidency.

If Bernie loses the nomination, he can take his marbles and go home, and his supporters can be spoiled children and do likewise, and we get another republican.  Oh, that worked SO WELL with Nader and Gore, didn't it?

Or, he can throw his weight behind Hilary and they can work together to make sure a D is in the White House.  He's already pulled her leftward, which is good.

And, the same thing vice versa.

The Dems have to come together--no circular firing squads.  Goal number 1:  a Dem in the white house.  Goal number 2:  as many Dems down-ticket as possible.

Alas, the Dems have a proven record of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Get out the vote!

Iowa Stubborn

There is some solace in the fact that Iowa usually gets it wrong.  But Ted Cruz is one frightening guy-- razor smart , nihilistic, and God-obsessed, and supported by the majority of Evangelicals in Iowa including men of sizable influence like Steve King and Bob Vander Plaats.

Iowa Republican politics makes it clear that their Evangelical Christians hate gay people, they hate women's rights, they hate science, and they hate atheists. They hate me.  And they are scary, scary people, because they are organized, they are concentrated, and they punch above their weight.

 Here's one theory: 

When you’re told by your pastor that all the people outside of your ideological tribe are utterly wicked and deserving of eternal torture, that’s how it becomes a sin to compromise with your opponents politically and work together for the common good. Because the point is not to find common ground with your opponents. It would be “unloving” to condone anything about their ideology since they’re going to hell. They need to be utterly defeated and brought into submission so that they can be saved. 

Everything about secular liberalism must be utterly antithetical to the Christian gospel and profoundly offensive to God. It has to be, or else secular liberals wouldn’t be worthy of damnation. So everything about liberalism is put into binary opposition with “God’s truth.” To believe in climate change is to believe that God is not in control of the environment. To believe that the government should provide for the poor is an emulation of atheist communism and a usurpation of God’s sovereignty. To promote “political correctness” is to silence the courageous proclamation of “Biblical truth."

Of course, if a more representative state like, oh, I don't know, CALIFORNIA? was able to vote early in the primary season, things would look different.  1 out of 12 Americans lives in California, which is not a majority-white state.  But instead, we give IA and NH, small states unrepresentative of the US at large, the first bite at the apple and the winner is....

Ted Cruz.

We'll see what happens next.