Published on Friday, November 5, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Don't Blame the Bible-Thumpers for Bush Victory
by Ira Chernus [Debby's brother]
A nation divided in two, red versus blue? A president elected by the
half that carries a Bible and cares only about God, gays, and guns? NO.
NO. NO. The simple story being touted by the mainstream media is not
only wrong. It’s dangerously wrong.
It’s wrong because the numbers don’t add up. Estimates of evangelical
Christians in the U.S. range between 30% and 40%. Let’s be generous and
use the 40% figure. Jim Wallis of Sojourners claims that less than half
are politically conservative. Let’s be generous and call it two-thirds.
That gives us only a bit more than a quarter of the voters fitting the
“God, gays, and guns” stereotype.
The polls tell a similar story. For conservative evangelicals,
opposition to abortion is pretty much a litmus test. But polls
consistently find upwards of two-thirds or more of all Americans
supporting the right of choice. Last Tuesday, when exit polls asked, “What is your most important issue?”, less than a quarter chose “moral
values.” When asked about the most important quality in a president,
only 8% chose “religious faith.” There simply aren’t enough
conservative evangelical Christians to elect a president.
Bush certainly did better this year than in 2000. What changed in four
years? There has been no significant increase in the number of
conservative evangelicals. Karl Rove claims there was a massive
increase in the number who voted. But the turnout of young voters was
also massive. They went for Kerry, 54-44. Add in newly registered older
voters who tend to vote Democratic, and it largely offsets the new
pro-Bush Christians.
What really changed between 2000 and 2004 was the fatal day that fell
in between: September 11, 2001. The Bible-thumper vote was necessary
for Bush to win this year. But it wasn’t sufficient. He had to have a
war on terrorism, too. It was the convergence of those two factors that
gave him victory.
The number of voters who named “terrorism” as their most important
issue was almost as high as the number who said “moral values.” And the
“terrorism” voters went even more massively for Bush (86%). “Is the war
in Iraq part of the war on terrorism?” voters were asked. The 43% who
said “no” went 9 to 1 for Kerry. The 54% who said “yes” went
4 to 1 for Bush.
Bush did not win by playing on the fear of sin. He did need the pious
faithful, the quarter or so of the population who fear God and sin
above all. More importantly, though, he had to play on the fear of
terrorism. He needed the millions more, professing all sorts of
religion and none at all, who fear terrorism above all. It was the
combination of the two groups that gave him victory.
The Bush campaign did a fine job of packaging sin, terrorism, and Iraq
all together, wrapped in the flag. But if there were no 9/11, no
terrorist threat, no lie that Iraq equals terrorism, Kerry would surely
be busy choosing his cabinet today. Mainstream journalists missed this
obvious point because they always want a simple story that sounds new
and fresh. That’s what sells newspapers. So now it’s “the great
moral divide.”
Progressives are tempted to tell the same story. It’s the kind of
simplistic “good guys versus bad guys” story that the conservative
evangelicals love to tell. And we probably like it for the same reasons
the right-wingers do. It feels good. Once we find the bad guys, it
proves that we are the good guys. It gives us a simple target to blame
and attack. Nothing binds us together like a common enemy.
But do we really want to emulate the people we claim to dislike so
much? During the campaign, when they accused us of being “complex” and
“nuanced,” as if it were a heinous crime, we were proud of those
labels—and with good reason. Reality is complex and nuanced. So is the
electorate.
People voted for Bush for so many different reasons. Some had to hold
their noses. They know that Bush’s policies on the economy, health
care, social security, and taxes are disastrous. But they are so
frightened by the specter of terrorism, and so indoctrinated in the old
“tough sheriff of the wild west” myth, they just want a leader who
would never waver or “flip-flop.” The Bush campaign masterfully made
that the great symbolic difference between the candidates. They got
millions to vote, knowingly, against their own economic interests.
We have a tough four years ahead, trying to stop the worst of the Bush – Cheney
horrors. The best way to frustrate a president's plans is to build a massive
antiwar movement. Just ask the ghost of Lyndon Johnson.
To build our movement, we must reach out to the 46% of the voters who
already say the war was a mistake. And we must get millions more to
change their minds and agree it was a mistake. Many of them are devout
thoughtful Christians. Many are confused or worried about social
issues. They understand what equal justice means, but they worry about “family values.” We
have to persuade them that the real problem is not moral decay, but the administration's
immoral, budget-busting war policies.
It won’t help if we direct all our energies against some mythical
majority of reactionary redneck Bible-belters. We will be focusing on
the wrong issue and, in the process, alienating the allies we need to
build a successful movement. We have to focus our opposition on a real
threat—the Bush war policies. If we build a big enough movement, we can
teach people to see how those war policies are linked to the other
great threats—the Bush policies on the economy, taxes, health care,
environment, social security, and all the rest.
To do that, we must offer a genuine model of tolerance, understanding,
and concern for people who are really scared, even if they are scared
more by shadows than realities. Even if you can muster no tolerance for
the “Gods, gays, and guns” crowd, even if you think they will never
oppose the war in Iraq, please remember: They are a distinct minority.
We need to reach the rest of the Bush voters, the ones who do have
nuance and open minds. They are the people who gave Bush his second
term. They are the people who may some day admit they made a mistake.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Colorado at Boulder and author of American Nonviolence: The History of
an Idea.
chernus@colorado.edu
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