True Blue Evangelicals: Eyes on the Prize looks at “The Party Faithful”

I admit it: I don’t think of Evangelical Christians as Democrats, ever. I always assumed they were all evolution-denouncing, pro-life, abortion-clinic-bombing, Iraq-war-supporting, deep Red Republicans who would rather suicide bomb every planned parenthood in America than vote for a Democrat.

I am wrong.

Salon is currently running an interview with Amy Sullivan, an author and evangelical christian who has been a blue-blooded Democrat her entire life. She recently wrote a book called “The Party Faithful,” which addresses the surprisingly large number of evangelical christians (according to her, 16 million evangelicals voted for Kerry in 2004… really?) who have voted for the Democratic party both recently and throughout the party’s history. The interview is fascinating for a number of reasons, from the story of how Sullivan realized she was an evangelical, despite her devotion to being a liberal Democrat (it happened at a Christian rock concert she was sent to cover), to her incredibly interesting and complex views on abortion, the abortion debate, a woman’s right to choose and how evangelicals have to deal with that:

You touch again and again on the issue of abortion and give examples of how Democrats can augment their appeal with religious voters just by subtle shifts in language. You write how some Democratic candidates are using the phrase “abortion reduction in addition to choice” when they discuss their positions. But isn’t this just a form of clever marketing? Doesn’t it obscure whether or not a candidate believes abortions should be legal?

None of these candidates suddenly start hiding the fact that they’re pro-choice. No one who voted in Michigan was confused as to whether Jennifer Granholm supported a woman’s right to have an abortion. What some Democratic candidates are doing would in fact just be clever marketing if it wasn’t backed by policies that are being proposed right now in Congress to reduce abortion rates. There’s really no argument about whether it would be a good thing to reduce the abortion rate. That’s been something that’s been standard policy with the choice groups in addition to everyone else for decades. The problem is, I’ve been talking to these folks for a long, long time, and they say, “Of course we want to reduce abortion! Don’t people know that?” And I say, “No, they don’t know that. And you don’t get any credit for it if people only hear you talking about a right to choose.”

If you take a group like Planned Parenthood, 90 percent of their efforts are on reducing unplanned pregnancies, and yet when they looked at the materials that were going out, 90 percent of their message was about abortion and a woman’s right to choose, and they said to themselves, “There’s a good reason people don’t know what our work really is. And don’t know that a very small percentage of what we do is related to abortion.” So, I think you can call it marketing, but I think that’s cynical, because I think it’s more appropriately public relations to let people know what Democrats really stand for and what liberals really stand for when it comes to abortion. The thing I always come back to is, Republicans take for granted that their base knows that they’re pro-life and they’re not moving on that. And so the people Democrats need to speak to are those people in the middle who are kind of queasy about abortion but who don’t want to see it outlawed. Democrats never mention reducing the abortion rate or the rate of unplanned pregnancies, and so they lose that opportunity to reach out to voters who are less sure about their position on abortion.

The interview is a really, really worthwhile read, and I suspect the book is as well. So consider this my latest installment of Eyes on the Prize. Let’s not forget about the people we don’t always assume to be liberal, to be Democrats, let’s get them on our side. This is our time, our election, our moment for CHANGE (erm, can you tell where my primary vote went?). WE CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE. EYES ON THE PRIZE, KIDS: BIG BLUE 2008!!!