I was a bit startled yesterday to read a Nathan Newman post at TPMCafe suggesting that bloggers had pulled off a coup in helping elect one Frank Page as president of the Southern Baptist Convention. I did a little research, and found that indeed there was a grassroots effort, spread in part by bloggers, to promote Page against the conservative establishment candidate Ronnie Floyd of Arkansas.But it would be a bit too much to assume that Page’s election represents some sort of sea-change in Baptist political theology. He’s a supporter of “biblical inerrancy,” and by his own account has supported the conservative theocratic takeover of the SBC. The big argument for his candidacy has mainly revolved around the need for congregational support for Baptist mission work, which has been lagging of late. And if you actually google around and read some of the blogs about the contest for the SBC presidency, there’s an underlying tension among Baptists that Page exploited: a neo-Calvinist movement in the Baptist seminaries that threatened the denomination’s commitment to evangelizing the world.This is a very old conflict among Baptists; in the nineteenth century, it produced two denominational spinoffs: the Primitive Baptists (two of my great-grandfathers were ministers for this group) who rejected missionary activity as a waste of time given the doctrine of predestination of souls; and the Free Will Baptists who rejected predestination altogether.The neo-Calvinists, who often overlap with the politicized right-wing leadership of the SBC, have exposed a lot of underlying Baptist angst about the drift of the denomination away from its roots. Page’s outspoken resistence to neo-Calvinism, and his advocacy of a more open and inclusive Baptist attitude towards unbelievers, may have been crucial to the success of his candidacy.So there’s more going on here than some grassroots rejection of “fundamentalism.” But Page’s election does in fact indicate that internet-based organizing is particularly relevant to a denomination with a strong tradition of local, congregational autonomy (vitiated so much by the conservative takeover of the SBC). Moreover, the upset probably indicates an understanding among Baptist clergy that the denomination’s massive growth in recent decades has slowed, and that Southern Baptists have lost the initiative to pentecostal churches, and to the nondenominational megachurches where right-wing politics are not the central message from the pulpit.I was raised as a Southern Baptist, and know a lot about the denomination and its membership. And althought rank-and-file Baptists have not vocally dissented from their Christian Right leadership, there’s a lot of snickering going on behind those Broadman Hymnals every Sunday on which the preacher suggests that divorce, feminism, extramarital sex, or homosexuality are unknown among the Godly. Maybe Page’s election will ultimately help energize the sensible if silent majority of Baptists. I certainly hope so.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.