In another example of The American Prospect‘s recent interest in the subject of politics and religion, their online edition has just published a poignant report by Michal Lumsden about the efforts of mainline Protestants to mobilize opposition to the war in Iraq. Focused mainly on the story of a UCC minister whose son, a Marine deployed to Iraq, signed up for sniper training (and whose husband, a retired career Marine, admits he “turned off religion and turned on duty” when called on to fight), the piece goes on to discuss the emphatic anti-Iraq-war position of virtually every mainline Protestant denomination.
You can read between the lines in Lumsden’s account her frustration with what she calls the “black-and-white world of secular versus conservative that the mainstream media perpetuates,” one of those conservative “memes” that also gets far too much acceptance from progressives who don’t happen to be religious themselves. You probably know the story: “liberal, relativistic” Christian denominations are declining or even dying, while conservatives–the real Christians–thrive.
This is not the time or place for an argument about religious trends in the United States, which do not neatly fit into the liberal-decline, conservative-growth pattern unless you really think the growth of nondenominational and charismatic church membership is all about cultural or political conservatism. But the fact remains that an estimated 44 million Americans belong to the National Council of Churches “mainline” family of denominations, which is a lot of folks to ignore, and a lot of folks whose leadership is in some ways more united on issues of war and peace–and united on this subject with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church–than their loud and much-discussed Christian Right rivals.

A few weeks ago the Survey USA polling firm released a big batch of state polls testing Hillary Clinton against the leading Republican presidential candidates. Now, via Kos, we learn that they are beginning to release new polls testing Obama and Edwards as well as HRC against the GOPers.
Today’s installment focuses on MO, OH, IA and NM. While the general impression is that Edwards runs slightly better than his rivals in most head-to-heads, the startling numbers are from OH, where for some reason Barack Obama runs well behind HRC and Edwards, and trails Giluliani, Thompson and even Romney (Edwards beats the Mittster by 20 points; HRC beats him by 10).
If their previous releases are any indication, SUSA will probably release similar polls from other states in the next few days.

Yesterday J.P. Green discussed the dilemma facing Democrats in Florida and Michigan over their decision to bend the knee to the DNC-ordained nominating contest calendar, or risk losing delegates at the next convention.
But on the broader issue of where candidates are actually spending their time, the FL/MI challenge to the IA/NH Duopoly has already failed, and not just because (on the Democratic side, at least) candidates recently agreed to boycott the two rebellious states.
As Chris Bowers at OpenLeft explained over the weekend, using the Washington Post‘s useful “Campaign Tracker” map, candidates for president in both parties have “made more trips to Iowa and New Hampshire, a combined 1,811, than [to] every other state and territory combined.” And many of the trips to other states (especially California) are simply for fundraisers, not public events.
It appears all the Democratic candidates are calculating that the impact of IA and NH on later states makes any post-NH strategy simply too risky. And the Republicans who have given the Duopoly less than full attention–namely Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson–are clearly playing with fire.

Dems interested in winning southern votes should take note of Tom Baxter’s article in the Southern Political Report, “For an overweight, underinsured South, the health care debate matters.” Baxter links to Kaiser Family Foundation statistics indicating that the south is the region most damaged by the lack of a responsive health care system, and adds:

…The South is the epicenter of the nation’s health care problems, with the highest rates of chronic ailments like diabetes and heart disease, the most uninsured and the highest percentage of state populations on Medicaid. A good deal of polling also indicates voters here care deeply about the issue.

What makes health care such a cutting edge issue for southern Democrats, Baxter suggests, is the thinness of GOP candidates’ health care ‘reform’ ideas. Baxter quotes Jonathan Oberlander, associate professor of social medicine and health policy and administration at UNC-Chapel Hill. “If you looked at the health care plans on the Republican side, you really wouldn’t have much to write about.”
Baxter doesn’t present polling data to bolster the case, but it nonetheless looks like a promising issue for Dems wanting to make inroads among southern voters.

According to the latest reports, Florida is going ahead with it’s plans for a primary on January 29th. Florida Dems have a few days to change their minds, since the DNC has set September 29 as the last day to comply with Party rules preventing the seating of any delegates from a state that holds a primary before Feb 5th, except for NH, SC, IA and NV
It’s hard to say how many Floridians are pissed about being told they can’t have an early primary because it might offend the privileged status of those four states. But judging by the sour grapes over early primary scheduling that keep rolling out of Florida, it is a problem. A recent example comes from the Sunshine State’s top columnist Carl Hiaasen, who makes some valid points and gooses a few bitter chuckles out of Florida’s unhappy predicament along the way. Says Hiaasen:

At first, the dispute looked like a fiendishly clever ploy to make the party leadership appear self-destructive and incompetent, thereby lulling Republicans into a sense of complacency. Now it’s obvious that the DNC really is self-destructive and incompetent, stubbornly insisting on perpetuating the charade that allows only Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada to hold nominating contests before Feb. 5.

Hiaasen’s point should resonate with those who can actually count electoral votes. Florida is a big bad mother, electorally speaking. So is Michigan, the other state dissed by the pledge of Democratic Presidential candidates not to campaign in states that have scheduled primaries before Feb. 5th, except for the privileged four.
FL and MI are being asked to take one for the team, but without a sweetener. Some of this fuss is about economics. NH reportedly rakes in about $300 million as a result of it’s first-in-the-nation primary. Perhaps giving FL and MI each one of the Democratic conventions in the years ahead could help with the resentment. In that event, however, you couldn’t blame other states for grumbling. Sooner or later Dems will have to allocate primary dates equitably, either through random selection or taking turns.
The early primary conflict between the DNC on the one hand and FL and MI on the other has been likened to a game of chicken. Unless grown-ups prevail and work out a compromise everyone can live with, after September 29th it may look more like a demolition derby.

With the failure in the Senate of a long series of amendments aimed at forcing a change of strategy on Iraq, we’re on the cusp of what looks likely to be a fractious intraparty debate among Democrats about what to do now. Though many antiwar activists have long feared that congressional Democrats will retreat to some sort of toothless bipartisan resolution urging Bush to change his unchangeable mind on Iraq, there’s actually little or no sentiment on either side of the partisan aisle for such an approach. But on the other hand, there’s no particular reason to think that repeating the maneuvering Congress went through with Bush in May–passing a war appropriations bill with a deadline, and inviting a presidential veto without the votes to override it–would turn out differently in the end.
Still, as a new post from McJoan at DailyKos makes clear, it looks like a netroots-based campaign to demand a return to a no-appropriations-without-a-binding-deadline strategy is about to get fully underway, with a lot of the pressure coming not only from rank-and-file Democrats but from presidential candidates. Dodd, Richardson and Edwards have been demanding this approach for months; Barack Obama signed on to such an effort last week; and with Hillary Clinton still to be heard from (though she voted against the post-veto funding bill earlier in the year), only Joe Biden has rejected it.
Moreover, advocacy of this harder-line strategy overlaps significantly, in the netroots and among the candidates,with efforts to get Democrats to abandon any commitment to a residual troop presence in Iraq (with Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Edwards, the targets of that effort).
While it’s important not to completely conflate the no-funding and no-residuals campaigns (I am sure there are other Dems beyond Obama who favor one but not the other), advocates of both do tend to make the same political argument: that Democrats must more sharply distinguish themselves from Republican on the war to maintain confidence–in the Democratic “base,” among antiwar independents, or in the electorate generally–that they represent “change” on Iraq as on other issues. This dovetails with a less political argument that Democrats have a moral obligation to make every effort to stop the war prior to the 2008 elections, and to ensure if they win that the war is ended firmly, finally and quickly. And both sets of arguments, political and moral, on funding and residuals, coincide with a widely held belief–articulated this week by Dr. Drew Westen at of all places The New Republic–that taking a hard line on the war in all its aspects is the only “emotionally compelling” approach that will excorcise the ghosts of past Democratic surrenders to Bush.
There are a lot of assumptions about public opinion on Iraq and on the Democratic Party underlying the maximum-confrontation point of view, and I’ll address them in a later post. Suffice it to say that today three-fifths to two-thirds of Americans continue to oppose Bush’s war policies, even after the Petraeus Week shenanigans, while support for a no-funding or no-residuals position is clearly lower, but very difficult to measure.
But there are two fundamental questions Democrats need to ask themselves before falling on each other in anger on the subject of what to do now about Iraq. Are no-funding or no-residuals hardliners ready to deal with the consequences of the Democratic divisions likely to emerge from such internal fights, including “Bush beats Democrats again” and “Democrats in disarray” headlines? And do those Democrats who oppose them have a better idea other than praying that election day gets here fast?

Kos has a nice little upper for Dems bummed out by the Petraeus ad vote. He points out that eight of the League of Conservation Voters’ “dirty dozen” pollution supporters got whipped in the last election. Two of the four survivors were the only Dems on the list, and both GOP survivors were elected “by a sliver.” May ’08 bring even better news for the defenders of Mother Earth.

Amidst a lot of general recriminations among Democrats over their inability to force a fundamental change in the Iraq war, and a specific, white-hot controversy over Republican efforts to demonize MoveOn.org, there’s also a growing realization that on one issue, health care, there’s an impressive convergence of views.
With the release of the “coverage” piece of Hillary Clinton’s health care plan earlier this week, it’s now clear the “big three” Democratic candidates for president have very similar approaches, with Edwards’ and Clinton’s plans being notably congruent. And for the most part, Democrats of all stripes are applauding.
Some progressives–e.g., Paul Krugman in today’s New York Times–credit Edwards for helping pressure his rivals into abandoning a timid, incremental approach to health care. Some centrists–e.g., the DLC–praise the Clinton-Edwards-Obama consensus as representing a sensible alternative to an unworkable status quo and to single-payer approaches. Everyone seems to agree that the vast gap between Democratic plans for universal health coverage and Republican advocacy of atavistic efforts to force Americans into individual health insurance or medical services purchasing will give voters an unmistakable choice in 2008.
E.J. Dionne suggests today that the Democratic health care convergence represents a broader Democratic agreement on domestic issues that resolves many of the intraparty arguments of the 1990s. He concludes that “the Democrats’ 2008 struggle is not about how to shape a new consensus but over who can take charge of the one that already exists.”
That’s worth pondering as the nominating contest heats up over the coming weeks.

One of the more interesting back-stories of the 2008 presidential campaign is the palpable state of crisis within the leadership of the Christian Right, whose “marriage of convenience” with the GOP isn’t working out too well. Divided internally on political strategy and specific issues (e.g., the environment, poverty and Iraq); chronically disappointed with the payoff from its alliance with Republicans; and struggling with generational challenges to its aging leadership, the politicized Christian Right is now facing the additional burden of having no consensus candidate for president to illustrate its residual power.
There has been some talk that Fred Thompson might be the solution to this last problem. But not according to Christian Right warhorse James Dobson, whose leaked emails blasting Fred as unacceptable on a variety of personal and ideological grounds have been making news this week.
Via Jason Zingerle, we have this pungent take on the story from Christian Broadcasting News blogger David Brody:

So for those scoring at home, let’s keep track shall we? Dr. Dobson says no to Thompson, no to Giuliani, no to McCain. Who does that leave? Oh, wait…who’s raising their hand and jumping up and down in the back of the room? Hey, that’s Mitt Romney! He says “what about me?”. It may be very hard for Dr. Dobson to come out and support Romney because many of his devoted listeners have a problem with Mormonism. Sorry, hate to bring that topic up again but I’m just “keeping it real” Now, as for Huckabee, that’s a possibility but can he win and is he only thought of as VP material? Maybe Dobson will put his individual support behind Huckabee but everybody wants to back the eventual winner so there’s a gamble there. I’m told that Dobson likes Newt Gingrich but Newt doesn’t look like he’s running.

Brody goes on to make the obvious point that this division of opinion about various candidates mainly benefits the one candidate with virtually no support among Christian Right elites, Rudy Giuliani. And Giuliani’s nomination, if it occurs, would create tensions in the GOP/Christian Right “marriage” as severe as those in Rudy’s own nuptial history.
If, God forbid, I were in the leadership of the Christian Right, I’d try to organize an effort to raise some serious jack for Huckabee, who’s the one theoretically viable Republican candidate with none of his competitors’ handicaps. (I’d also work the phones to get Iowa religious conservatives to abandon Sam Brownback, whose hopeless campaign is hampering Huckabee’s bid). Huckabee might not make it in the long run, but he’d serve as a convenient place-holder for theocons until they are forced to make a Decision for Christ between his flawed rivals.
While we are on this topic, I’m happy to report that The American Prospect has a new weekly feature up online called The FundamantaList, by Sarah Posner, reporting on political developments within the Christian Right. You might want to check out an earlier Posner piece on growing pentecostal support for Huckabee.

The buzz in Iowa Democratic circles today is over Barack Obama’s decision, made about a month ago, to skip tonight’s AARP candidate forum in Davenport. TAPPED’s Garance Franke-Ruta, who’s been covering Iowa closely, refers to it as “Obama’s big mistake.”
The timing is interesting, since earlier this week Obama unveiled a tax reform plan that included, among other things, a provision eliminating federal income taxation entirely for seniors earning less than $50,000 annually. You’d think he’d want to talk about it in front of an especially receptive audience. Maybe he’ll get lucky and the questioners at the AARP forum will ask the other candidates about it.