Since I’m always standing at the intersection of politics and religion, I’m always interested in fresh data on the subject, and wrote some up at New York:
One of the big predictions in American politics lately, of infinite comfort to embattled progressives, is that the increasing number of religiously non-affiliated Americans, particularly among younger generations, will spur a steady leftward drift. Perhaps that will mean, we are told, that Democrats will be able to build their elusive permanent majority on the grounds of abandoned houses of worship. Or perhaps, some hope, the religious roots of today’s Republican extremism will begin to wither away, allowing American conservatives to resemble their less intemperate distant cousins in other advanced democracies, ending the culture wars.
Both propositions may be true. But it’s a mistake to treat so-called nones as an undifferentiated secularist mass, as Eastern Illinois University political scientist Ryan Burge explains with some fresh data. He notes that “in 2022, 6% of folks were atheists, 6% were agnostics, and another 23% were nothing in particular.” This large bloc of “nothing in particular” voters may lean left, all other things being equal, but they tend to be as uninterested in politics as in religion, making them a less than ideal party constituency. He explains:
“To put this in context, in 2020 there were nearly as many nothing in particulars who said that they voted for Trump as there were atheists who said that they voted for Biden.
“While atheists are the most politically active group in the United States in terms of things like donating money and working for a campaign, the nothing in particulars are on another planet entirely.
“They were half as likely to donate money to a candidate compared to atheists. They were half as likely to put up a political sign. They were less than half as likely to contact a public official.
“This all points to the same conclusion: they don’t vote in high numbers. So, while there may be a whole bunch of nothing in particulars, that may not translate to electoral victories.”
As Burge mentioned, however, there is a “none” constituency that leans much more strongly left and is very engaged politically — indeed, significantly more engaged than the white evangelicals we’re always hearing about. That would be atheists. In a separate piece, he gets into the numbers:
“The group that is most likely to contact a public official? Atheists.
“The group that puts up political signs at the highest rates? Atheists.
“HALF of atheists report giving to a candidate or campaign in the 2020 presidential election cycle.
“The average atheist is about 65% more politically engaged than the average American.”
And as Thomas Edsall points out in a broader New York Times column on demographic voting patterns, atheists really are a solid Democratic constituency, supporting Biden over Trump in 2020 by an incredible 87 to 9 percent margin. It’s worth noting that the less adamant siblings of the emphatically godless, agnostics, also went for Biden by an 80 to 17 percent margin and are more engaged than “nothing in particulars” as well.
So should Democrats target and identify with atheists? It’s risky. Despite the trends, there are still three times as many white evangelicals as atheists in the voting population. And there are a lot more religious folk of different varieties, some of whom have robust Democratic voting minorities or even majorities who probably wouldn’t be too happy with their party showing disdain for religion entirely. There’s also a hunt-where-the-ducks-fly factor: If atheists and agnostics already participate in politics and lean strongly toward Democrats, how much attention do they really need? There’s a reason that politicians, whatever their actual religious beliefs or practices, overwhelmingly report some religious identity. Congress lost its one professed atheist when California representative Pete Stark lost a Democratic primary in 2012; the only professed agnostic in Congress is Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, whose political future isn’t looking great.
It’s a complicated picture. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat argues that American liberalism’s increasing identification with secularism is keeping a lot of conservative Christians from politically expressing their reservations about Donald Trump. And religious people beyond the ranks of conservative faith communities may feel cross-pressured if Democratic politicians begin to reflect the liberal intelligentsia’s general assumption that religion is little more than a reactionary habit rooted in superstition and doomed to eventual extinction.
Perhaps it makes more sense for Democratic atheists and agnostics to spend time educating and mobilizing the “nothing in particular” Americans who already outnumber white evangelicals and ought to be concerned about how they’ll be treated if a Christian-nationalist Gilead arises. Only then can “nones” become the salvation for the Democratic Party.
I can’t think of any man in America with whom the gap between his desserts and his reward is so wide. The American people owe him a huge debt of gratitude, but the way the Republicans vilified him in 2004 has made it possible for Democrats in Florida to vilify him for consequences of defying the (unanimously passed) party rules about primary dates. It has made it possible for people like Emmanuel and Schumer to vilify him in 2006 for carrying out a different set of priorities and not making himself their lackey. And now the Obama campaign officials want to gather unto themselves all credit for every political success everywhere. It’s bad enough that Dean is a prophet without honor in his own party, but a lot of dedicated (and probably not especially well-paid) people who have been preparing the ground and planting the seed are not being permitted to gather the harvest. What’s more, it looks as if the land is going to be left fallow now.
Democrats will never change: Form a circular firing squad.
Perhaps Obama feels he can do it better, but firing all these folks two weeks after the election is foolish. They learned things that just might be valuable two years from now. But then I haven’t heard Obama say one word of thanks to Dean.
Bob Griendling
This is very distressing, but Rahm Emmanuel hates Howard Dean and hated the 50 state strategy, preferring that every dime spent on grassroots party-building in off-years instead be hoarded for the DSCC and DHCC. The party apparatus will now be in the White House’s hands, and that will probably be that.
This is indeed distressing news, what I feared and extremely short sighted. I seem to remember that the State chairs wanted this process to continue and wanted Dean to remain as the leader of the DNC (though I could be wrong). There has seemed to me to be a tension between the DCCC and the DNC. Frankly, as a non-insider to the workings the workings of the upper echelon of the Democratic Party, the existence of these two independent groups makes little sense. If we are to have a unified and ongoing strategy, there should be one direction. Also, I understand that the President is the “leader” of the party. But, I would feel more comfortable with a DNC that was more independent – one that had the good of the party as a whole as its primary concern. Candidates must have massive ego strength to run. And this strength can so easily become egocentrism. It occurs to me (and as a progressive I am somewhat appalled with myself) that I would like a professional, Democratic Party machine.