Wright's Toll in West Virginia

God-o-Meter wrote earlier today that Democratic congressional candidate Travis Childers's victory in a ruby red Mississippi district showed that the GOP's attempts to tie Democrats to the Wright/Obama brouhaha aren't working. But that's not to say that Obama himself is out of the woods when it comes to paying electoral costs for Wright. When asked if Obama shares the views of Rev. Wright in an exit poll yesterday, 51-percent of West Virginia Democrats said yes. Those voters broke for Hillary Clinton by 80-percent. Those who said Obama didn't share Wright's views split 51 to 44 percent for Clinton. That was one of the biggest gaps in the Mountain State's Democratic electorate.

Another yawning gap: 56-percent of West Virginia Democrats said Obama didn't share their values, twice the number who said the same thing about Hillary Clinton. For all Obama's faith talk, values is still his weakness.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Jeremiah Wright, polls, values, West Virginia

posted by Dan Gilgoff @10:58am Permalink Email This Add to:

Wright Attack Fails in Mississippi

Mississippi Democratic congressional candidate Travis Childers, whose Republican opponent tried to lash him to Rev. Jeremiah Wright by way of Barack Obama's endorsement of Childers--a tenuous connection, to be sure--won his special election last night. It's the third straight special election House pickup for the Dems, and it came in a district that George W. Bush took by 25-points in 2004.

The Wright ad against Childers also invoked Obama's remarks about small town Americans clinging to guns and religion. So two faith-based lines of attack against Obama and the Democrats are failing in one of the nation's most culturally conservative districts. When's the last time that happened?

Here's the Childers/Wright ad:

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Mississippi, Travis Childers

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 7:42am Permalink Email This Add to:

No God Gap in West Virginia?

Here's what Hillary Clinton's faith outreach director just said about Clinton's victory tonight in Virginia via email:

There continues to be no emerging trend lines other than the one established at the beginning of the Democratic Primary: American faith and values voters connect with and support Senator Clinton. Tonight in West Virginia there is no difference.

But is it true?

Sure, Clinton's enjoyed a huge advantage among white religious voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. But Clinton's West Virginia landslide owed little to the God gap. Clinton won weekly and more-than-weekly churchgoers by 60-percent and 66-percent, respectively. Impressive. But she won similar proportions of infrequent churchgoers and those who sleep in on Sundays--who typically comprise Obama's base--claiming 70-percent and 63-percent of those voters, respectively.

No God gap there.

And Catholics, among whom Obama has been trounced by Clinton in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, broke for Clinton by a much smaller margin in West Virginia, by 52-percent to 45-percent.

Sure, Hillary shellacked Obama in West Virginia today. But religion may have played a smaller role than expected.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Catholics, Hillary Clinton, West Virginia

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 9:34pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Bill Donohue's Take on Hagee's Apology

The case is closed on John Hagee, the Texas evangelist whose endorsement of John McCain set off a national controversy because of allegations that Hagee's books and sermons contain anti-Catholic rhetoric. Or at least it's closed according to Bill Donohue. The president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, Donohue led the campaign for McCain to distance himself from Hagee after the endorsement. After receiving a letter of apology and clarification from Hagee, Donohue today said the controversy is officially over. God-o-Meter caught up with Donohue by phone shortly after he made the announcement.

In your statement today, you said that Hagee’s apology was born of weeks of meetings with Catholic leaders. Do you have a window into what that process was like?

It’s been going on for weeks. A lot of Catholic activist friends of mine and some evangelicals have been powwowing with [Hagee] in Washington. They asked me to meet with Hagee and I said no several times. I’m not interested in meeting with him until I get what I want, a public statement and apology that’s complete and speaks specifically to these black legends about Catholics-Jewish relations, and the Holocaust in particular. And once that’s accomplished, I’ll be glad to meet with him. Now that’s going to happen on Thursday.

Quite frankly, I didn’t think that I would get something this complete. What I did not want to get was this “If you’ve been offended, I’m sorry.” I wanted something more specific. There’s no substitute for personal interaction, when you have people sitting down with you and explaining how you’ve been hurtful. Now we can bury this hatchet. It’s rather dramatic….

What really got me offended was the idea of “I’m the purist Christian on the block” when he’s talking to Jews—“I’m not out there persecuting the Jews like all these Catholics.” I’m sure we’ve seen the last of that.

Is Hagee acknowledging that he said anti-Catholic things, or only that he was insensitive toward Catholics and was careless about saying things that could be construed as anti-Catholic?

It’s very hard for me to deal with motive and intent. Is the person a real bigot? Unless the person admits to it, I don’t know. I’m not here to judge a pure heart.

What are you going to say to Hagee when you meet?

I want to sit down and talk to him. There’s not going to be any lectures. I got what I needed. I just want to shake his hand and thank him for doing this. I’m hoping now that people in our society who’ have looked on him as telling the truth about the Catholic church’s relations with Jews will hopefully reconsider….

There’s a residue of anti-Catholicism in part of the evangelical community and when you have the readiness of mind to believe the worst of any group, it becomes easier to swallow the moonshine, so to speak.

How far back does Hagee’s record of making anti-Catholic statements go?

I wrote to him in 1997 and he never wrote back. We had somebody from our chapter go to one of his events and he had some video that was casting aspersions (on Catholics) and he never answered me.

People like Tony Perkins and Richard Land and James Dobson, we obviously have theological differences, but there has always been comity and an amicable relationship. I get involved with them occasionally on policy things, like Justice Sunday, and Hagee is not only not invited, his name is not even mentioned. He’s kind of out of the loop.

Are you concerned that all of Hagee’s books and other writings about Catholics are still in circulation? Does he need to renounce all that?

If you were to come by my office, you would see hundreds upon hundreds of books by anti-Catholics—we have a huge library of them. You can’t do anything about his books.

The McCain campaign has caught a lot of grief over its Hagee endorsement. Has the campaign been in touch with you about resolving this issue?

The campaign has not been in touch with me, but intermediaries have been in touch back to the time when this happened.

I’m not a virgin. I understand where this is coming from. We’re in the middle of a presidential campaign. He took on enormous pressure because I went after him after he endorsed McCain. So there are all kinds of media now who had never heard of this guy and they’re not putting him in the spotlight. He got rapped all over the place. Could I have gotten this letter eleven years ago? No, he blew me off then.

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Filed Under: Bill Donohue, Catholic Leage, Catholics, John Hagee, John McCain

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 6:25pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Catholic League: Hagee Controversy Officially Over(!)

That was easy.

The conservative Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights has received a letter from televangelist/John McCain supporter John Hagee expressing regret over having offended Catholics (read it here). And, just like that, Catholic League president Bill Donohue says he accepts Hagee's apology:

“The tone of Hagee’s letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it. Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology. What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns. But he has done just that. Now Catholics, along with Jews, can work with Pastor Hagee in making interfaith relations stronger than ever. Whatever problems we had before are now history. This case is closed.”

God-o-Meter wonders whether the Catholic church, for which Donohue is not an official spokesperson, or tens of millions of American Catholics feel the same way. What about the issue of Hagee's allegedly anti-Catholic comments and his criticism of the Catholic church's actions during the Holocaust that appear in his books? Hagee didn't renounce any of that. Does Donohue care? Seems like a pretty quick fix to a very thorny problem.

Not to mention the convenient timing for John McCain, who's suffered a lot of grief for pursuing and embracing Hagee's endorsement. Somehow, God-o-Meter doubts that the case is closed on Hagee. This settlement might just spur more critical coverage of the Hagee-McCain connection.

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Filed Under: Bill Donohue, Catholic League, Catholics, endorsements, John Hagee, John McCain

posted by Dan Gilgoff @12:49pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Wright vs. Bush: An Unpopularity Contest

Gallup's new poll reporting that Americans are more likely to be deterred from supporting John McCain over his association with George W. Bush than to be dissuaded from backing Barack Obama over Jeremiah Wright has been getting lots of attention in the blogosphere these last few days, particularly among Obama boosters.

But Gallup's own analysis notes that digging deeper into the numbers reveals worse news for Obama than for McCain:

[T]he data suggest that Wright may be more detrimental to Obama's candidacy than Bush is to McCain's. Nearly one-fifth of Democrats, 19%, say they are less likely to vote for Obama because of his ties to Wright (only 2% say the Wright-Obama connection increases their odds of voting for Obama). Meanwhile, just 10% of Republicans say they are less likely to vote for McCain because of his association with Bush; about the same percentage (12%) say this relationship makes them more likely to vote for McCain.

But it's also worth noting that more Democrats report being less likely to support McCain because of his Bush connection (64 percent) than Republicans who report Wright-inspired reluctance over Obama (50 percent). That's especially important because both candidates claim crossover appeal.

Ergo, what would have been more helpful is a poll of independent voters.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Jeremiah Wright, John McCain, polls

posted by Dan Gilgoff @11:58am Permalink Email This Add to:

Obama's Expanding Campaign for Jews

How often do presidential candidates write op-eds for Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth? God-o-Meter will look into it. But Barack Obama's recent appearance in those pages is just another step in a remarkably comprehensive campaign to woo Jews. His weekend interview with The Atlantic was another. The New York Times has some new details about other recent developments in that campaign:

The magazine interview follows recent speeches in which Mr. Obama has affirmed his support for Israel, most notably last week at an event marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel sponsored by the Israeli Embassy in Washington. On Sunday, he contributed an op-ed article to the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest paper in Israel.

But the attacks from the right on Obama's Israel position keep coming. In a statement yesterday, minority House leader John Boehner jumped what seemed to be Obama's characterization of the unresolved Isreal/Palestinian issue as a "constant sore" on international relations:

Israel is a critical American ally and a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, not a ‘constant sore’ as Barack Obama claims. Obama’s latest remark, and his commitment to ‘opening a dialogue’ with sponsors of terrorism, echoes past statements by Jimmy Carter who once called Israel an ‘apartheid state.’ It’s another sign that Obama is part of the broken Washington Americans are rejecting.

The Obama campaign quickly responded with a vaguely worded statement about the "sore" reference "clearly referring to the 'lack of resolution to this problem'," though it never mentioned that the problem was political stalemate and continuing violence between the Israelis and Palestinians. But The New York Times suggests, indirectly, that Obama could still be vulnerable to attacks like Boehner's:

In a Gallup poll released last week, 61 percent of Jewish voters surveyed said they would vote for Mr. Obama if he became the Democratic nominee. In several recent elections, nearly 80 percent of Jews voted Democratic...

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posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 7:58am Permalink Email This Add to:

Why Clinton's Sticking Around

Read some choice snippets from this Financial Times dispatch from West Virginia ahead of tomorrow's primary and then tell God-o-Meter if you can really blame Hillary Clinton for staying in the race a couple weeks longer.

Like most people in Mingo County, West Virginia, Leonard Simpson is a lifelong Democrat. But given a choice between Barack Obama and John McCain in November, the 67-year-old retired coalminer would vote Republican.

"I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist,” said Mr Simpson, drawing on a cigarette outside the fire station in Williamson, a coalmining town of 3,400 people surrounded by lush wooded hillsides.

Mr Simpson’s remarks help explain why Mr Obama is trailing Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival, by 40 percentage points ahead of Tuesday’s primary election in the heavily white and rural state, according to recent opinion polls....

A visit to Mingo County, a Democratic stronghold in the heart of the Appalachian coalfields, reveals the scale of Mr Obama’s challenge – not only in West Virginia but in white, working-class communities across the US. With a gun shop on its main street and churches dotted throughout the town, Williamson is the kind of community evoked by Mr Obama’s controversial comments last month about “bitter” small-town voters who “cling to guns or religion”....

None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. The depth of opposition is particularly striking considering that Mingo County is one of the most Democratic places in West Virginia, having cast about 85 per cent of its votes for the party in the 2006 midterm elections. If Mr Obama cannot win there in November, he has little chance of carrying the state.

Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values”, stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim – an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months – despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr Wright’s church in Chicago. Others mentioned his refusal to wear a Stars and Stripes badge and controversial remarks by his wife, Mich­elle, who des­cribed America as “mean” and implied that she had never been proud of the US until her husband ran for president.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, values, West Virginia

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 7:41pm Permalink Email This Add to:

Barack Obama: What Israel and the Jews Mean to Me

Barack Obama certainly has work to do in bringing Jews, a bedrock Democratic constituency, over to his side before November. In Pennsylvania, the last primary state with a good-sized Jewish population--they accounted for one in twelve Democratic voters there--Obama lost Jews to Hillary Clinton 62-percent to 38-percent. It's a vulnerability Obama has long recognized. He's made a habit of meeting with Jewish activists to address their concerns, rooted largely in his stated support for talking to Iran, past sympathetic statements toward the Palestinians, and the fact that he's not Hillary Clinton, who has neither of those first two problems.

Now, Obama has given an interview to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to talk Jews and Israel. The second half of the interview captures Obama's Israel/Middle East positions, and has the Illinois senator challenging some of the Jewish state's policies even while attempting to establish credibility as a reliable backer. What God-o-Meter finds more intriguing, however, is the first half, in which Obama speaks cogently and in detail about what the Jews and Israel mean to him as a person:

[W]hen I think about the Zionist idea, I think about how my feelings about Israel were shaped as a young man -- as a child, in fact. I had a camp counselor when I was in sixth grade who was Jewish-American but who had spent time in Israel, and during the course of this two-week camp he shared with me the idea of returning to a homeland and what that meant for people who had suffered from the Holocaust, and he talked about the idea of preserving a culture when a people had been uprooted with the view of eventually returning home. There was something so powerful and compelling for me, maybe because I was a kid who never entirely felt like he was rooted. That was part of my upbringing, to be traveling and always having a sense of values and culture but wanting a place. So that is my first memory of thinking about Israel.

And then that mixed with a great affinity for the idea of social justice that was embodied in the early Zionist movement and the kibbutz, and the notion that not only do you find a place but you also have this opportunity to start over and to repair the breaches of the past. I found this very appealing.

You’ve talked about the role of Jews in the development of your thinking

I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn’t know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it’s something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.

One of the things that is frustrating about the recent conversations on Israel is the loss of what I think is the natural affinity between the African-American community and the Jewish community, one that was deeply understood by Jewish and black leaders in the early civil-rights movement but has been estranged for a whole host of reasons that you and I don’t need to elaborate....

Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

I find that really interesting. I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

....The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.

Sure, John McCain is convincing that he says he's "Hamas's worst nightmare." But can he talk about the Jews and Israel with that much soul?

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Israel, Jews

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 6:34pm Permalink Email This Add to:

McCain's Evangelical Enthusiasm Problem

Bob Novak writes today that a well-placed Christian Right source says that Mike Huckabee, who has publicly endorsed and campaigned with John McCain, has floated the idea that an Obama candidacy might be just what the American people need, perhaps to set the stage for the Arkansas governor to run again in 2008 as the GOP's savior:

One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me Huckabee in personal conversation with him embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

Huckabee told Novak that the report was hooey. So did evangelical activist Michael Farris (pictured, right), the supposed ringleader of what Novak calls the "let Obama win movement":

....at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the Biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

God-o-Meter phoned Michael Farris to follow up on Novak's report and he denied it, just as he did to Novak. He told GOM:

The one thing we know about the plagues from the Old Testament is that they're highly undesirable. And I just don't talk in those terms. I'm not supportive of the Obama presidency for any reason.

Still, Farris has declined to endorse McCain. Farris told God-o-Meter that he is likely to pull the lever for the Arizona senator in November, but that he won't organize evangelicals for him like he did for George W. Bush. To God-o-Meter, that's McCain's problem: not that evangelical activists are actively rooting for an Obama victory to teach the GOP a lesson or because they want to pave the way for a Huckabee candidacy in 2012, but simply because they're not excited about McCain. To wit, Farris:

There’s a difference between endorsing somebody and willing to vote for somebody. I probably would vote for [McCain] unless he appointed a pro-choice or pro-abortion running mate or something of that sort.

But he hasn’t sought my endorsement. I’ve been part of a group that’s trying to talk to him several times both before he got the [presumptive] nomination and after, and he has flatly refused to talk to us. So it’s pretty evident that he really doesn’t want to work with a lot of the social conservatives

Even if you’re not supportive of it, is there a school of thought among evangelicals that an Obama presidency would be preferable to McCain because of what Novak has identified as this plague theory, that the political picture has to get worse before it gets better?

I haven’t heard anybody that feels that way, that an Obama presidency could be preferable for any reason. I’ve heard people talk about what happens if we do have an Obama presidency, but that’s people trying to make the best of a potentially bad situation. People have said if he does become president, maybe he’ll be so radical that he’ll turn a lot of people off, but nobody’s hoping for that. No sensible person would hope for that.

The evidence that nobody wants it to happen is that people keep trying to meet with McCain. We want to have a reason to support him, but given his past record on embryonic stem cells, on attacking the First Amendment with his campaign finance shenanigans, and given his effort to thwart the President’s judicial nominees with the Gang of 14, coupled with his open repudiation of evangelicals in the last president cycle and his refusal to meet with [conservative evangelical] leaders, you add it up and you say, this guy doesn’t’ want our help.”

Do you know who’s in charge of conservative Christian outreach on McCain’s campaign?

No. And that’s a statement all by itself.

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Bob Novak, Christian Right, evangelicals, Michael Farris, Mike Huckabee

posted by Dan Gilgoff @ 2:27pm Permalink Email This Add to: