Courage Makes A Majority

Time to Crush Their Spirit

I know, it has been a long time.  I was just watching Keith Olbermann and I had a bit of an epiphany.  Keith was doing a great special comment telling John McCain to get control of his campaign.  The vitriol among the Republican base has been whipped into such a frenzy that the networks have been questioning the tactics of the GOP and whether we now have a safety issue. 

It has become clear to me as I watch this election unfold.  We are getting a glimpse at the worst our society has to offer.  The idea that people feel its appropriate to equivocate the Democratic Nominee to a Terrorist, Manchurian Candidate and a Traitor is disturbing.  Shouts of "Kill Him!" are even more frightening. 

But in all of this drudgery, something has crystallized for me.  This moment; This election provides us an opportunity beyond electing a once in a life time leader.  It is the chance for us, Democrats and Independents, to destroy the Republican party as it is currently constituted by delivering an election night ass whipping like we haven't seen since days of FDR.

Having a the Democratic Party own the White House, Sixty Senate seats and maybe 100 seat majority in the House would do just that.   If we can see election results somewhere in that neighborhood, it would send a message to the lowest common denominator of our society, those people shouting "Traitor" and "Kill Him."  It would show them they are clearly on the fringe of our society.  That the power they have enjoyed the last eight years under George Bush has been taken away.   And without that power, why even bother showing up. 

It is a chance to drive a wedge between traditional conservatives that believe in less govenment, fiscal responsiblity and dare I say civil liberties (the government should not mettle in our lives) and the social conservatives that could care less about fiscal issues and civil liberties and see the government as a tool to legislate culture and morality.

Let's break their spirt. 

• Step 1: Take the White House.  Looking good so far, based on the latest polling, 538.com predicts Obama's chance of winning at about 95.8%.  Furthermore, the chance of an Obama landslide (defined as winning over 375 electoral votes) is about 53.4%.   Now, my guess it the election will tighten a bit between now and November 4th, but I rather be in this position than McCain's.
• Step 2: Take 60 Senate Seats.  This one is a bit tougher, but still possible.  First, the Democrats start with 50 seats (including Bernie Sanders I-VT, but not Joe Leiberman I-CT who is not only dead to me, but also the Senate Democrats).  If we win the White House, both Joe Biden and Barack Obama's seats will be filled by appointments from Democratic Governors.  There are no Democratic Senate Seats at risk (Landrieu in LA is safe),  There are four seats that are definite pickups, VA, CO, NM and NH.  That's 54.  There are another 4 that are highly likely to flip: MN, OR, AK, NC.  That is 58.  Two more to get and in a landslide some questionable seats can flip and we have 3 targets (MS, GA, KY).  All three of these states are Eastern/Central Time Zone so we will have an idea early in the night.    Even if we don't flip those last two seats, we may be able to flip some sitting moderate Republican senators like Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe or John Sununu.
• Step 3: Take a 100 seat majority in the House.  The Dems currently have a 37 seat majorty that means they have to flip 32 more seats (37+32 new Dem seats+32 less GOP seats=101 seat majority).   Our good friends at Swing State Project project 5 GOP seats are likely to flip, 23 are toss-ups and another 15 are weak holds for the GOP, so there are 43 seats in play, on the other hand there is only 1 Dem seat likely to flip, 3 toss-ups and 14 more weak holds.  Again in a landslide election, there is a good chance for the Dems to hold most of their seats and flip most of the GOP seats.
• Step 4: Take those solid majorities and mandate from the public for Obama and use it wisely, govern effectively and prove that the progressive ideology is superior to the failed conservatism fo the last 8 years.

There you have it.  A four step plan to change the political landscape for the next generation.  Let's go and deliver.  And for your viewing pleasure, here is Keith's special comment from tonight's show.

Exposing Dobson as a hypocrite, Part II

OK, yesterday I spent a few moments on the fraud that is James Dobson.  Well today, I came across a website put together as a response to Dobson's twisted logic about Obama.  I suggest you take a look:  http://www.jamesdobsondoesntspeakforme.com/. 

Not that it was hard, but the author put together some quotes from both Dobson's radio address from yesterday and the Obama speech from 2006 that Dobson chose to parse and criticize in his address.

In his address, Dobson makes five claims about Obama: 1) that "everyone must agree, or we don't have a right to fight for our beliefs"; 2)  that he is "deliberately distorting the Bible"; 3) that it's "undemocratic to pass legislation that I find offensive to the scripture"; 4) that he wants us to "go to the lowest common denominator of morality; and 5) that Obama (or any other candidate) never talks about family as the foundation of our society.

This website picks apart all these claims and shows them to be false by using exerpts from the very speech Obama gave in 2006 that Dobson was railing against, except the fifth claim which used a passage from Obama speech from this past Father's Day.    Please take a look at the site.  It's about a five minute read (the comparison starts halfway down the page).

and in case you haven't noticed, I am not a fan of James Dobson.

UPDATE:  Sometimes you run across someone who has the very same thoughts you do, but they say them so much better.  Here is a statement from Rev. Jim Wallis that was released today, and it hits the issue square between the eyes, and it is written so much better than anything I have drafted.

James Dobson, of Focus on the Family Action, and his senior vice president of government and public policy, Tom Minnery, used their "CitizenLink" radio show to criticize Barack Obama's understanding of Christian faith. In the show, they describe Obama as "deliberately distorting the Bible," "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," "willfully trying to confuse people," and having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."

Now that James Dobson is insinuating himself into this presidential campaign, his attacks against his fellow Christian, Barack Obama, should be seriously scrutinized. And because his basis for the attack on Obama is the speech the Senator from Illinois gave at our Call to Renewal/Sojourners event in 2006 (for the record, we also had Democrat Hillary Clinton, and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback speak that year), I have decided to respond to Dobson's attacks. In most every case they are themselves clear distortions of what Obama said in that speech. I was there for the speech, Dobson was not.

You can read Obama's now two-year old speech, which was widely publicized at the time and will see that Dobson either didn't understand it or is deliberately distorting it. There are two major problems with Dobson's attack today on Barack Obama.

First, Dobson and Minnery's language is simply inappropriate for religious leaders to use in an already divisive political environment. We can agree or disagree on both biblical and political viewpoints, but our language should be respectful and civil, not attacking motives and beliefs.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, is the role of religion in politics. Dobson alleges that Obama is saying:

"I [Dobson] can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue. And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. ... What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees; we have no right to fight for what we believe."

Contrary to Dobson's charge, Obama was very strong in defending the right and necessity of people of faith bringing their moral agenda to the public square, and was specifically critical of many on the left and in his own Democratic Party for being uncomfortable with religion in politics.

Obama said that religion is and has always been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but also said that "religion has no monopoly on morality," which is a point that I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands--so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond.

Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good-- for all of us and not just for the religious.

Instead of saying that Christians must accept the "the lowest common denominator of morality," as Dobson accused Obama of suggesting, or that people of faith shouldn't advocate for the things their convictions suggest, Obama was saying the exact opposite--that Christians should offer their best moral compass to the nation but then have to engage in the kind of democratic dialogue that religious pluralism demands. Martin Luther King Jr. perhaps did this best of all with his Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other.

In making abortion the single life issue in politics and elections, leaders from the Religious Right like Dobson have violated the "consistent ethic of life" that we find, for example, in Catholic social teaching. Dobson has also fought unsuccessfully to keep the issue of the environment and climate change, which many also now regard as a "life issue," off the evangelical agenda. Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals who believe that poverty, "creation care" of the environment, human trafficking, human rights, pandemic diseases like HIV/AIDS, and the fundamental issues of war and peace are also "religious" and "moral" issues and now a part of a much wider and deeper agenda.

That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to James Dobson and the power wielded by the Religious Right for so long. Many evangelical votes are in play this election year, especially among a new generation, and are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for James Dobson's attack today on Barack Obama.