What Is This World Coming To?

One thing you can always say about the Democrats as a national party. When they don’t get it, they don’t get it in spectacular fashion.

After their defeat 2004, the Democrats stopped referring to Red State America as Jesus Land embarked on a new strategy structured on the correct assumption that “God is not a Republican”

The flaw lies in assuming that therefore follows He must be a Democrat. So they’ve invited Him, (or Her, or Whomever) to be part of the DNC’s “Big Tent” — even throwing Him a big welcome in Denver.

Denver: AP At the first official event Sunday of the Democratic National Convention, a choir belted out a gospel song and was followed by a rabbi reciting a Torah reading about forgiveness and the future.

Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun who wrote “Dead Man Walking,” assailed the death penalty and the use of torture.

Young Muslim women in headscarves sat near older African-American women in their finest Sunday hats.

The Democrats got it right when they observed that God is not a Republican, but they got it right by accident, not by conviction. The proof is in the pudding. Is God a Catholic? Then He can’t be a Muslim, so what are they doing there? If He is a Muslim, then what are the Jews doing there?

The result was on display at Sunday’s interfaith service, staged in a theater inside the Colorado Convention Center, and will be evident throughout the convention agenda and on the sidelines.

There will be four “faith caucus” meetings, blessings to open and close each night, and panels and parties run by Democratic-leaning religious advocacy groups that didn’t even exist in 2004 — not to mention protests from religious groups and leaders opposed to the Democratic platform.

One hallmark of Democratic faith efforts at the convention is diversity, which might soften objections from party activists wary of the Christian right or any mixing of religion and politics. Behind the scenes, efforts to attract the religious vote will concentrate largely on Christian “values voters.”

“If we create or become a mirror image of the religious right, we have failed,” said Burns Strider, who ran religious outreach for Hillary Clinton’s campaign and now does faith-based political consulting. “But if we have increased the number of chairs around the table, … then we’ve succeeded.”

But, noted the AP religion writer, somewhat quizzically;

Despite all the effort, there is little evidence religious votes are shifting. A Pew poll released last week showed the political preferences of religious voters, including highly sought Catholics and white evangelicals, have scarcely budged since 2004.

“What? How can that be? We got rabbis. We got ministers. We got imams. We got evangelicals and nuns and Gospel singers . . . ”

Boy, when they don’t get it, they really, really don’t get it. Do they?