The electoral demographic no one talks about

We've heard a lot about the GOP's Latino problem, meaning that Latinos "broke" for the Democrats and rejected the Republicans. And about the GOP's lack of appeal for women. We've also heard that the LGBT community went heavily for Obama. But have we heard about THIS problem?

Imagine a demographic that has doubled its share of the population over the past two decades, is up by 25 percent over the past four years alone, and now accounts for as many as one in five Americans. Imagine that this demographic votes disproportionately for one political party—to the tune of 70 percent for Obama versus 26 percent for Romney in the 2012 election. Sounds like a demographic that ought to be of interest to politicians, journalists, and activists, right?

That demographic consists of people who describe themselves as atheist, agnostic, or religiously unaffiliated—the “nones,” as they’re sometimes called. And it hasn’t attracted anywhere near the attention it deserves in the postgame analysis of the 2012 election....

Like any group of this size, the religiously unaffiliated aren’t monolithic.....They are spread fairly evenly across education and income levels. And they’re politically diverse when it comes to economic ideas. But they do seem to largely agree on one thing: that mixing religion with politics is a bad idea.

....Others on the right, like the Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, did get it: “It’s not that our message—we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong—didn’t get out. It did get out...It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed. An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”

Exactly.  But of course, once the media DOES catch on, they will miss the fact that Albert Mohler does not define Christianity.   There are a lot of alliances that can be built between progressive Christians and the "Faitheists", electorally and otherwise.

The Republicans' Demography problem.

From Slate, discussing why Romney's opposition to immigration reform (and support of Draconian Arizona laws) is not the only reason for his party's demographic problems:

Indeed, perhaps the most telling exit poll result about Hispanics is the almost identical thumping Romney took with Asian and Jewish voters, and even more so with black voters. ... ....The real issue isn’t Democrats courting minority “special interests” (indeed, as an economic matter Latin American immigration is good for everyone except Americans who primarily speak Spanish), it’s Republicans who use targeted outreach to help boost their share of the white vote despite a generally unpersuasive message. Viewed in that light, the anti-Sotomayor demagoguery becomes far more comprehensible. Far from an unforced error, it’s part of a reasonably effective strategy to ensure the loyalty of white voters without altering an economic agenda that’s relentlessly biased toward the rich.

This is genuinely too bad. There are some smart ideas in the Republican Party platform and bad ideas in the Democratic one. ....[But] clearly a policy agenda composed primarily of tax cuts for the top 2 percent or 3 percent of the income distribution doesn’t have much to offer the broad mass of people.

Latinos aren’t into that agenda for roughly the same reason that Asians and African-Americans aren’t—absent the frisson of worry about the “white establishment” being forced into minority status—it’s just not very compelling. To do better, Republicans don’t need a different immigration policy or better Hispanic outreach strategy, they need an overall policy that’s more compelling to the middle class and will help them do better with voters of all kinds. In fact, endorsing immigration reform now might make things worse for them, by enlarging an electorate that’s fundamentally hostile to their worldview.

What are the odds of structural reform?  The wingnuts and idealogues are already trumpeting that the problem is insufficient "conservative values", while the pragmatists are seeing the writing on the wall.  But, like the boy holding a wolf by the ear, the Tea Party drags them to be unelectable if they stay associated, but  they can't quite let go of the Tea Party lest they too are bitten.

Returning to Reality

Back in the days of the Bush Administration, the NY Times reported  on an exchange with a Bush Aide, who dismissed the reporter as a member of the "reality based community" and told him, "we create our own reality."

Yeah, not so much. In this election, Republican pundits were adamant  they were going to win by a landslide.  It wasn't just spin.  They really, really believed it.

One of the more interesting questions of this election is how and why so many Republicans, who are certainly just as capable as Democrats at reading polls, chose to ignore the overwhelming statistical evidence that a Romney win was unlikely. I suppose one could say it is not much of a mystery, and that this mass refusal to accept politically inconvenient facts is of a piece with, say, conservative denial of global warming. And maybe that’s all it is. But I suspect that there was something else at play, too. 

When I was talking to that GOP operative, he repeatedly said that a big reason he was feeling good about his party’s chances was the sense of assurance he was hearing in the voices of Romney campaign aides on the conference calls he was on. “I know when I’m being bullshitted, and they aren’t doing that,” he told me.

They had their own data.  They were making their own reality.

From the Atlantic:

Before rank-and-file conservatives ask, "What went wrong?", they should ask themselves a question every bit as important: "Why were we the last to realize that things were going wrong for us?" ...

On the biggest political story of the year, the conservative media just got its ass handed to it by the mainstream media. And movement conservatives, who believe the MSM is more biased and less rigorous than their alternatives, have no way to explain how their trusted outlets got it wrong, while the New York Times got it right. Hint: The Times hired the most rigorous forecaster it could find.    

It ought to be an eye-opening moment.    

We've talked before about the Republican rejection of reality, which we see in evolution deniers, climate change deniers, and the anti-intellectualism that passes for Tea-Party populism.

The big question is, will the sensible Republicans fight to put facts back into their party?  Or will they continue to be distracted by birthers, and conspiracy theories about Muslims?

NY Times:

“We have a choice: we can become a shrinking regional party of middle-aged and older white men, or we can fight to become a national governing party,” Mr. Weaver [a Republican strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Senator John McCain and Jon M. Huntsman Jr.,] said in an interview. “And to do the latter we have to fix our Hispanic problem as quickly as possible, we’ve got to accept science and start calling out these false equivalencies when they occur within our party about things that are just not true, and not tolerate the intolerant.”

What are the odds?

Amazed, joyful, thankful. Now let's get to work.

Because we re-elected Barack Obama. Because Marriage equality passed in MD. Because Marriage Equality passed in ME. (Still waiting to hear from WA.) Because the first openly lesbian senator has been elected. Let's try to reunite -- reunite as Americans -- and keep this bus from going over the fiscal cliff. We have so much work to do!

Vote for equality

The argument for marriage

Don't forget there's an election coming

Did you notice what happened during the storm? Barack Obama did what a President should do. He mobilized the government to do its job. Even Republican Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey had nothing but praise for Obama's leadership.

Christie told news outlets that the president’s response had been “outstanding,” said that coordinating with the administration had been “wonderful,” and remarked that “the president has been all over this and he deserves great credit.”

Mitt Romney, however, having previously called on FEMA to be abolished, staged a fake "relief rally" where his campaign bought cans of food for people to pretend to donate. There is nothing about that man that is real.  How can people be so blind as to actual consider voting for that smarm-artist?

And let's not forget that the Republican cast of characters is defined by a platform that is anti-women, anti-gay, and really anti-anyone who isn't a Christianist white male.

From Religion Dispatches,

Mourdock and his Republican, anti-women, anti-choice teammates invoke God so God might bless their dirty work—which all too frequently comes down to controlling women. In a recent interview, Gloria Steinem said, “The deep anthropological, political reason for controlling women is to control reproduction,” adding that, “reproductive freedom, the right to decide for yourself when and whether to have children, is the single greatest determinant of whether you are healthy or not, whether you are poor or not, how long you live, whether you are educated, [and whether you are] able to be active outside the home.” Even our legal system, she pointed out, “penalizes the invasion of private property more than the invasion of bodies,” because the legal world “was built on a law that saw women as possessions, as objects.”

It’s convenient to appeal to God to justify power structures that benefit you. But it’s not really God Mourdock is worshipping. It’s misogyny.

 And as the Roman  Catholic Church mobilizes to fight marriage equality in four states, it is increasingly driving a split into the community, although some brave priests are speaking out, like Fr Richard Lawrence in Maryland:

"But could not civil law be allowed to progress where church law cannot go, at least not yet? Personally, I believe that it can and that it should," he said. "So there you have it: the official teaching of the church and my personal reflections." 

The St. Vincent parishioners gave Lawrence a standing ovation.

 Don't forget to vote.

Meanwhile in Minnesota

The big story about Minnesota's proposed "Prop8" style amendment is how it is ripping apart the Roman Catholic community.  There is a robust campaign of Catholics against the amendment, and although Archbishop Nienstedt has tried to silence them, even some priests have been brave enough to speak out.

In the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a recent article highlights this conflict in the story of one family:

The Seiverts' shift away from the church began in the fall of 2008, when their college-age daughter told them she was a lesbian. As the family began adjusting to the news, the Seiverts became increasingly uncomfortable with the church's preaching against same-sex marriage. In September, they sent their pastor a letter explaining they were leaving the parish. Soon after, the priest sent back a letter, calling same-sex attraction a "disorder" similar to "alcoholism ... or clinical depression, or kleptomania."....

Jason Adkins, executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, said that while Catholics might struggle with the amendment for personal reasons, when they hear from the church directly, "they recognize that the Catholic position is not ... meant to be mean-spirited or bigoted toward our fellow brothers and sisters with same-sex attraction."

Okay, put these together.  "We don't mean to be mean-spirited, but being gay is a disorder."  HELLO?

When [their daughter] Ana finally revealed the secret she'd been carrying, Greg Seivert said, "She was just transformed. When she was able to name her loving feelings for another woman, she was just filled with energy; there was brightness in her eyes. She felt like she was home." 

Seivert paused briefly, his eyes tearing slightly. "And boy, how could I say no to that, to say no and turn that light off?" 

....[As their priest] Rudolphs activity intensified, so too did the Seiverts' alienation from their church. Veronica Seivert wanted to meet with Rudolph and tell him of their decision to leave, but Greg Seivert didn't want a confrontation. Instead, they decided to send a letter and a final stewardship check.

That's more generous than I would have been.

Rudolph responded days later with a two-page letter, warning that those who act on same-sex attraction face "a spiritual dead end." With God's help, he wrote, Catholics are called on to help those "overcome disordered patterns in our life." 

The Seiverts were aghast. To this day they have not shared the letter with their daughter. 

"To tell us our daughter, who she is, is spiritual death," Veronica Seivert said. "I totally refuse to believe that."

Not surprising, given that Abp Nienstedt has told parents they must abandon their gay children for the sake of their souls.  It's really a corruption of the faith.

The experience has hardened the Seivert family's attitude on the proposed marriage amendment.

And driven them out of the church to boot.  There's a lot of conflict now amongst Catholics in Minnesota, many of whom openly oppose the amendment,  and anger at the activities of the archdiocese and its efforts to tell children to hate themselves or their parents.  And of course, collateral damage , for example, denying charities support if they have even a remote affiliation to equality supporters.

We've been to a couple of friendly Episcopal churches in Minneapolis/St Paul:  St Christopher's and St Mark's Cathedral.  Seems to me  that any Episocpalians in MN ought to invite their Catholic neighbors to go to church with them.

Lies

I think it is possible to hold conservative views honorably about a lot of things.  But what I don't understand is why the conservative side is telling so many lies.

We see it in Mitt Romney, who flip flops and lies so much that there are Youtube videos showing him debating himself.

And we see it in the anti-marriage equality campaigns, where the opposition keeps telling lies about the LGBT community and the consequences of equality.  (Here's a new one, exposed, that shows they are lying when they claim that marriage in MA caused Catholic Charities to stop adoptions.  It wasn't marriage, it was laws against discrimination and the anger of the Vatican that Catholic Charities DARED to place any children with gay families.)

We see vicious lies about Obama, and liberals generally.  And we see lies told about LGBT people in the equality campaigns.

It's easy to demonize people far away, on a TV screen.  It's harder to tell lies about people you know.  It's why we LGBT people have to be out as much as possible, so that the big fearsome THEM is really that nice couple down the street.

But this new era of lying is disturbing.  And it frankly is worse on one side than the other.

How about this lie:  evangelical pundit and crusader against Obama, Dinesh D'Souza has been caught in a whopper.  Seems he went to give a lecture at  Christian conference with his much younger fiancée.  Shockingly, they shared the same room.

Problem is, Dinesh is still married to his wife--and hadn't even filed for divorce at the time.

Sarah Posner has more:

D'Souza says, "I had no idea that it is considered wrong in Christian circles to be engaged prior to being divorced, even though in a state of separation and in divorce proceedings. Obviously I would not have introduced Denise as my fiancé at a Christian apologetics conference if I had thought or known I was doing something wrong."

Really?  He didn't know? While he rails against evil homosexshuls and the sanctity of marriage, it did not occur to him that this was a little "off"?

Of course liberals have affairs too. But it's not the affair. It's the blatant hypocrisy.  

What the Republicans have done in Congress since 2010

Pushback on the religious freedom meme.

There's finally some push back on the religious freedom meme.  That's that argument that defines "religious freedom" as the "right to impose religious beliefs on others who do not share them".

It's the argument that my marriage (blessed in the Episcopal church, no less) is an affront to the religious freedom of Roman Catholics because I'm gay.

It's the argument that a woman choosing to use contraception is an affront to her Roman Catholic employer.

So, pushback number one:  report from  The Center for American Progress that finds religious freedom and freedom to marry are mutually compatible (my emphasis).  

Americans from all faith backgrounds support the ability to practice one’s religion free from government interference. These twin freedoms—the freedom to worship and the freedom to marry—are both important American values, and they are wholly compatible with one another. ... 

This report presents that analysis across four main areas.....

Lastly, we want to acknowledge that an increasing number of religious Americans and denominations have voiced their support for marriage equality. Religious opponents of marriage equality do not speak for all people of faith. Their claims should not go unchecked.

Here's the executive summary and here's the full report.

Pushback number two is against the idea that a Roman Catholic employer in a secular business has the right to determine whether women he employs have access to insurance coverage for contraception.  (In Arizona, which is reversing towards the Stone Age, there are actual efforts that could allow women to be fired for using birth control-- a personal decision that is none of her employer's business! )

Addressing this in federal court, a Federal Judge has strongly dismissed this argument. From the NY Times:

Judge Carol Jackson of Federal District Court, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dismissed the lawsuit filed against the administration brought by a mining company and its owner, who said that providing contraceptive coverage in the company health plan violated his personal religious views.Judge Jackson, based in St. Louis, correctly pointed out that the rule exempts churches, mosques and other houses of worship. The mining company — a secular, for-profit employer — clearly does not qualify for that exemption... 

Any imposition on religion is trivial and remote, she explained. The health care coverage would offend the plaintiffs’ religious beliefs only if an employee “makes an independent decision to use the plan” to obtain contraceptives; and that independent decision is no different from an employee using part of a salary to pay for contraceptives, which clearly would not harm the employer’s right to free exercise of religion. 

The 1993 statute “is not a means to force one’s religious practices upon others” and “does not protect against the slight burden on religious exercise that arises when one’s money circuitously flows to support the conduct of other free-exercise-wielding individuals who hold religious beliefs that differ from one’s own,” Judge Jackson wrote. 

As Susan Russell put it a while back, Freedom of Religion means the freedom to practice your religion as you choose, NOT the freedom to impose it on others.  A secular employer has no more rights to deny women contraception than to insist they can't have sex.... or deny employment to Roman Catholics.

And let's not forget that if the goal of the Roman Catholics is to reduce abortions, a sure-fire way to do that is with (you guessed it) contraception!  As a new study shows, free contraception dramatically reduces the rates of abortion. But of course it's not about abortion...or about children.... it's about putting women (and gays)  in their place as less-than.

But you know, I'm not RC anymore, and I refuse to be treated as though I were.

Voting on marriage Nov 4: and why it matters

The four states voting on marriage equality in the next election are critical. The money from those opposed to equality is pouring in, with the same cries as the last few times. "Religious freedom!" (by which they mean, their "right" to impose their religion on YOU.) "Think of the Children!" (by which they mean, DON'T think of the children if their parents are gay, or if they are gay).

These usual memes are seasoned by increasingly strident anti-gay rhetoric that demonizes and dehumanizes LGBT people.

 I am no longer able to see this as a legitimate disagreement. This is the cynical politics of hatred and division. It is also a direct attack on me and my family, a direct effort to deny us any rights or protections, and a direct effort to harm our children.

If you live in, or know anyone who lives in MD, ME, or WA, ask them to vote YES. If they are in MN, ask them to vote NO.

 Meanwhile, Jeffrey Toobin explains why these votes are SO important. 

There is one unavoidable fact about American voters and same-sex marriage: every time the people have had chance to speak on the subject, they have voted it down. ... This may change in November, when voters in Maine (for a second time), Maryland, Minnesota and Washington State have their say….. 

As a technical legal matter, the results of these referenda are irrelevant to legal questions about gay marriage that are now before various courts. The Supreme Court will soon reveal whether it will hear one or two major cases about same-sex marriage this year. ... The Constitution either does or does not guarantee the rights of gay people to marry—and the opinions of voters has nothing to do with resolving that question. The whole point of judicial review is to protect minority groups from having their rights violated by the whims of the majority. In theory, the work of the courts and the will of the voters operate on entirely separate tracks.

The real world, however, works very differently. The courts, especially the Justices of the Supreme Court, are acutely aware of how their rulings reflect (or conflict with) public opinion…. It was not until 1967, in Loving v. Virginia, that the Justices got around to declaring that states could no longer ban interracial marriage. Many (but not all) such laws were ignored or obsolete by that point. This is not to diminish the significance of Loving. The case was and remains a key practical and symbolic statement about race and the constitution. But by 1967, the hard work of changing the country on this issue had already been done by the civil-rights movement. The Court was a lagging indicator of where the country already was. 

And so while both cases [DOMA and Prop8], as I wrote recently, are potential landmarks, neither may turn out to be as important as four ballot initiatives. The votes will give us the best picture of where the country is on same-sex marriage. ... given the Court’s history, even the more liberal justices may be reluctant to impose same-sex marriage on the country if the people—the voters—repeatedly say that they do not want it. The polls predict close races in all four states. The results will echo well beyond their borders.

And just to bring it home:

If you vote for the Democrat, you will go to hell

That's what the Catholic Bishop of Springfield IL says.

People of faith object to these platform positions that promote serious sins.....I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.

Okay, so the more than 50% of Roman Catholics currently polling for Obama are bound for hell. 

Good to know.  You might want to pass that along.

Meanwhile, more from the Archbishop of Newark (mentioned in my previous post) who said that Catholics who support marriage equality are ineligible for Communion. That wasn't all he said.  John Becker writes in the HuffPo:

Myers also says that in considering how to cast their ballots in November, Catholics should scrutinize the "full spectrum" of each candidate and not vote for any candidate who does not endorse what he calls "proper" marriage. He also supports gay people marrying non-gay spouses; according to The Record, Myers "wrote that it is possible for gay people to be married to members of the opposite sex and live 'good, faithful and even joyous married lives. It is a lie to say that they are living, or have lived, a lie.'" Finally, Archbishop Myers compares same-sex marriage to incest.... 

Let me be clear: When Archbishop Myers says that Catholics who don't subscribe to that church's Stone-Age sexual mores are unworthy of full participation in the church, he's not talking about a small sliver of the Catholic population. On the contrary, polls consistently show that Catholics support LGBT equality at a higher rate than the general public. In fact, a whopping 71 percent of Catholics support full civil marriage rights for same-sex couples.  

Have the RC Bishops finally  jumped the shark?

From Andrew Sullivan, a picture of the Catholic Vote.  He writes,

A small word of thanks to Cardinal Dolan, Robert George and K-Lo for helping shift the Catholic vote massively toward Obama with their summer campaign for religious liberty. And special thanks to Paul Ryan. No actual Catholic could ever find anything but puerile cruelty in the works of Ayn Rand, or rally to the idea that home-care for the elderly should be sacrificed to reduce tax rates for the super-rich. Paul Ryan believes that the basic principles of Rand can be compatible with Catholicism. American Catholics are just not that dumb or confused about their faith.

The President of half the people? (updated)

Religious identity in the US.  Data from 

http://religions.pewforum.org/maps

I was going to write a short blog about how annoyed I am at the relentless pandering to Christians expressed by the Republican ticket, including Mormon in chief.

 (Never mind that Mormonism is in many ways not really Christian. Here's an interesting piece from Simon Critchley of the NY Times, discussing the unique "post-Christian" doctrine of the Mormons).

But about 16% of Americans have no religious affiliation, and are the fastest growing group in the religious landscape.

Does Mitt Romney believe that he will be the president of atheists and agnostics too? What about LGBT people?

Then Mother Jones released a video of Romney talking to HIs Kind, the very wealthy donors, and showing utter disdain for nearly half of the American population.

 Forbes calls it Romney Fail: Caught On Video Revealing Extraordinary Contempt For 47 Percent Of Americans:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax.” 

Romney goes on to say; “My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” 

So much for the notion of the President of the United States being the president of all the people.

From Tax policy Center

The contempt is breathtaking, isn't it?  The only entitlement on display is Romney's entitlement that he should be president.  (IF you read further, you'll see that he believes that if elected, the economy will improve without him doing anything, just because there's a white guy with money back in the White House.  Baffling.)

Although the implication is that Americans who do not pay income tax are poor brown freeloaders, and Not Like Us.  It's the politics of division--putting the minorities, the gays, the atheists, on the other side.  But just look at the chart to the left.  Romney has gone after his own people--the poorly off whites and elderly who are the base of the Republican party.  He has just called them freeloaders and said he has no interest in them.

The facts are that the majority of Americans pay some kinds of tax (social security, payroll, etc) even if not income tax.  Elderly people don't pay income tax (they don't have jobs).  And further,  those not paying income tax are increasingly those better off--not freeloaders the way Romney means, but taking advantage of other opportunities.  From ABC (my emphasis)

Nontaxable returns from people with income between $75,000 and $100,000 went from 4,025 in 1996 to 476,624 in 2009 — an increase of almost 12,000%. More than 1,400 millionaires didn't pay income taxes in 2009, either.

While we're on the subject of taxes, shouldn't Candidate Romney come clean about his own tax returns?  Or is that only a concern for The Little People?

In any case, there is no longer any pretence that Candidate Romney wants to represent Americans.  No, he just wants to represent the country club set.

Update: David Brooks nails it in.  NAILS it.  David Brooks.

The Republican Party, and apparently Mitt Romney, too, has shifted over toward a much more hyperindividualistic and atomistic social view — from the Reaganesque language of common citizenship to the libertarian language of makers and takers. There’s no way the country will trust the Republican Party to reform the welfare state if that party doesn’t have a basic commitment to provide a safety net for those who suffer for no fault of their own. 

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency. 

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

...[A]s a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.

Did Mitt just throw the election?  We can but hope.

Stating the obvious

From The Advocate:

Today at the Values Voters Summit, a gathering of social conservatives, former presidential candidate Rick Santorum told his audience not to expect intelligent people to support their causes.

“We will never have the elite, smart people on our side,” the notoriously antigay Santorum told summit attendees.

No kidding.

A former Republican discovers the hollowness within

I can think of quite a few people who should read this.

Jeremiah Goulka grew up as a pro-business Republican in a white, upper middle class community.  He went to law school and joined the Bush II administration.  But as he became uncomfortable with the abandonment of basic Constitutional protections and the abuses of Guantanemo and Abu Ghraib, he decided he would feel better if he did something positive, so he volunteered  to go to New Orleans post-Katrina to help re-establish government institutions and was stunned at what he found.

I noticed that the criminal justice system treats minorities differently in subtle as well as not-so-subtle ways, and that many of the people who were getting swept up by the system came from this underclass that I knew so little about. … 

It turned out that everything I was "discovering" had been hiding in plain sight and had been named: aversive racism, institutional racism, disparate impact and disparate treatment, structural poverty, neighborhood redlining, the "trial tax," the "poverty tax," and on and on. Having grown up obsessed with race (welfare and affirmative action were our betes noirs), I wondered why I had never heard of any of these concepts. 

Was it to protect our Republican version of "individual responsibility"? That notion is fundamental to the liberal Republican worldview. "Bootstrapping" and "equality of opportunity, not outcomes" make perfect sense if you assume, as I did, that people who hadn't risen into my world simply hadn't worked hard enough, or wanted it badly enough, or had simply failed. But I had assumed that bootstrapping required about as much as it took to get yourself promoted from junior varsity to varsity. It turns out that it's more like pulling yourself up from tee-ball to the World Series. Sure, some people do it, but they're the exceptions, the outliers, the Olympians.

Then he had a trip to Iraq where he found institutional incompetence and disdain for the Iraqi people.  These experiences created an epiphany, that the Republicans simply weren't seeing people beyond themselves--whether poor minority families struggling in Louisiana, or Iraqis helplessly watching as a war is waged for 10 years in their country.

An old saw has it that no one profits from talking about politics or religion. I think I finally understand what it means. We see different realities, different worlds. If you and I take in different slices of reality, chances are that we aren't talking about the same things. I think this explains much of modern American political dialogue.

My old Republican worldview was flawed because it was based upon a small and particularly rosy sliver of reality. To preserve that worldview, I had to believe that people had morally earned their "just" desserts, and I had to ignore those whining liberals who tried to point out that the world didn't actually work that way. I think this shows why Republicans put so much effort into "creat[ing] our own reality," into fostering distrust of liberals, experts, scientists, and academics, and why they won't let a campaign "be dictated by fact-checkers" (as a Romney pollster put it). It explains why study after study shows -- examples here, here, and here -- that avid consumers of Republican-oriented media are more poorly informed than people who use other news sources or don't bother to follow the news at all.

This piece exposes the mindset of otherwise intelligent people who simply "don't get it".  You know, like Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney. They really are in their own world-- a world where the poor are lazy freeloaders and "welfare queens", where hardworking immigrants are dangerous drug dealers and gay people and atheists are un-American, and where anyone who needs it has access to money and healthcare can get it if they just work hard enough.

It's well worth reading the whole thing and sharing widely.

At some level I get this, because it's the world I live in.  I'm a comfortably-off white middle class professional surrounded by others like me.  My job is secure, and I worked hard to get it.  It would be nice to imagine that anyone could do what I've done, but that's not true--I had the advantages of a stable family, a good education, and the social skills to take advantage of opportunities.  I wasn't crippled by college debt and didn't have to work my way through school. It would be very easy for me to ignore the plight of the poor and disenfranchised, because they are generally invisible to me, or at least de-personalized and distant. "They" are the homeless person begging on the street corner, or the thuggish youth with no prospects whom I see loitering by the train station, or the small, tired Latino men with callused hands waiting by the hardware store parking lot for a job.

Yet I feel there is a social contract that should include them, that the gap between rich and poor is problematic, that we should all contribute to the good of all (and if that means more taxes on those of us who can afford it, who are paying the lowest rate since Eisenhower, so be it).

So what gives me a social conscience? Why am I a "reality centered" Democrat,  rather than a Republican in denial?

Why are you? Or why not?

How to tell if your religious liberty is under threat

From Emily Heath at the HuffPo:  

1. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am not allowed to go to a religious service of my own choosing.
      B) Others are allowed to go to religious services of their own choosing. 

2. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am not allowed to marry the person I love legally, even though my religious community blesses my marriage.
      B) Some states refuse to enforce my own particular religious beliefs on marriage on those two guys in line down at the courthouse. 

3. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am being forced to use birth control.
      B) I am unable to force others to not use birth control. 

4. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am not allowed to pray privately.
      B) I am not allowed to force others to pray the prayers of my faith publicly. 

5. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) Being a member of my faith means that I can be bullied without legal recourse.
      B) I am no longer allowed to use my faith to bully gay kids with impunity. 

6. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am not allowed to purchase, read or possess religious books or material.
      B) Others are allowed to have access books, movies and websites that I do not like. 

7. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) My religious group is not allowed equal protection under the establishment clause.
      B) My religious group is not allowed to use public funds, buildings and resources as we would like, for whatever purposes we might like. 

8. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) Another religious group has been declared the official faith of my country.
      B) My own religious group is not given status as the official faith of my country. 

9. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) My religious community is not allowed to build a house of worship in my community.
      B) A religious community I do not like wants to build a house of worship in my community. 

10. My religious liberty is at risk because:
      A) I am not allowed to teach my children the creation stories of our faith at home.
      B) Public school science classes are teaching science.

See the original for the scoring key and commentary

The Big Dog Speaks

Love Bill's speech!  He hit it out of the park.  As did Sister Simone and Michelle Obama...great convention.

But the challenge is getting kids to buy in.

So, how do we get our disconnected college-kids to watch a video of an old white man?
Hmmm...we thought "drinking game".  We thought,  "pay them for noticing what time particular statements were made".

How do we get voting age kids who are not politically engaged, to realize they need to GOTV?  Comments, please!

Republican exclusion: no gays need apply

Frank Bruni in the New York Times  on the absence of gays or gay issues from the Republican Convention last week, and the limits of the Big Tent.

It was striking because the Republicans went so emphatically far, in terms of stagecraft and storytelling, to profess inclusiveness, and because we gays have been in the news rather a lot over the last year or so, as the march toward marriage equality picked up considerable velocity. We’re a part of the conversation. And our exile from it in Tampa contradicted the high-minded “we’re one America” sentiments that pretty much every speaker spouted.
...
Romney exemplifies the party’s cowardice on this front, its continued deference to the religious extremists who get king-size beds and down-stuffed duvets in the tent....He favors a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman. He opposes even civil unions.
....
Several gay Republicans with whom I spoke in Tampa said that the near-complete absence of any talk onstage about gays and lesbians was in fact a hopeful sign that the party’s extremists on gay issues had lost the war to moderates. At least gays and lesbians weren’t being cast in a negative light, as a way of riling the worst of the base.
...
But that’s not progress enough. Silence does nothing for gay and lesbian teenagers racked with self-doubt and anxiety about what the world has in store. Or for committed same-sex couples who lack the legal protections that their straight counterparts have. Silence is a stalling tactic, and silence is a cop-out. 

On the convention stage in Tampa, where estrogen was platinum and melanin was gold, Republicans spoke eloquently about a country that valued every person’s worth and was poised to reward each person’s dreams. Those words would have carried much more weight if coupled with even a glancing recognition of gay and lesbian Americans. Instead speakers tacitly let the party’s platform do the talking. It calls for the kind of constitutional amendment that Romney now supports.

Someone I know via Twitter  asked me if there is any way I would ever vote for a Republican.  I told him, not these Republicans.  Even if they regained some fiscal sense, I could never vote for a party that delegitimizes and even criminalizes my fundamental self.

And then of course, there are Romney's lies

From Slacktivist, commenting on Steve Benen's efforts to document Mitt's 533 lies in 30 weeks.

...This is unprecedented. “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” Romney’s pollster, Neil Newhouse, said. 

This has produced what James Fallows calls the “post-truth” age — a relentlessly dishonest onslaught of brazen falsehoods with which the media and the political system are struggling to cope. What do you do when every article, every “fact-check,” every arbiter denounces a lie and corrects it, but then a politician just keeps repeating it?
It’s remarkable to behold. 

One of the weirder aspects of this for me is watching this unfold in the politically conservative culture of my evangelical world. The most partisan evangelical conservatives are also those most likely to rant against “relativism” and to trumpet their status as defenders of “absolute truth.” Those same folks will dismiss this post — and all 30 of Benen’s posts above — as mere partisan attacks without ever bothering to examine the 533 factual instances of Mitt’s mendacity, chronicled. 

That’s the only cognitive defense they have, I guess. Jam fingers in ears and shout la-la-la-you’re-being-partisan!

 Republicans:  they do make their own reality. And facts aren't part of it.