Now Obama is also a Christianist, rendering that dubious term to be even more meaningless (if that’s possible).  For my part, I look forward to seeing an extensive essay warning of the dangers of incipient Social Gospel theocracy in the event of an Obama Presidency and the argument that the Democrats have become an essentially religious party dominated by liberation theologians.  I think I may end up being disappointed. 

The difference in tone and attitude towards left-liberal “Christianism” compared to Sullivan’s dire warnings of fundamentalist takeover is remarkable, but not surprising.  It is consistent with the sort of criticism of religious conservatism that Sullivan has been making for years, which is centered around rejection of any politics that would put religious imperatives into action in public life.  That rejection does not include political action inspired by religious imperatives that are broadly in line with a socially liberal and activist politics.  The rule seems to be something like this: the less orthodox or traditional the religion or church, the more acceptable its “interference” in political life.    

The electoral angle is interesting, but I would consider the source of that figure of Obama being able to get 40% of the evangelical vote.  As veteran Romney foes remember, Mark DeMoss was one of Romney’s evangelical “outreach” advisors and was not especially successful in that role, so I might not rely on him for insights into how evangelicals will vote or how they are thinking about this election.  For Obama to receive 40% of the evangelical vote, he would need to improve on his current standing by more than 90% or eighteen points up from the abysmal 22% support he currently has.  For all of the talk about the enthusiasm gap, Obama’s religious rhetoric, McCain’s problems with religious conservatives, evangelical disillusionment with the GOP, and the rising generation of evangelicals interested in a broader political agenda, which are all real, almost 70% of white evangelicals say they will back McCain in the fall. 

That is a significant decline from Bush’s peak of support among these voters at 78%, but as the Post explains Bush was only polling at 65% at this time four years ago.  Think about that: the average evangelical voter is more likely at this point in the cycle to be supporting McCain than he was likely to be supporting Bush four years earlier.  Such stability in levels of support for the Republican nominee should put to rest speculation about Obama’s potential to steal evangelical votes away from the GOP.  Obama is actually polling lower than Kerry was (and Kerry’s numbers declined over the course of the campaign).  What Obama’s numbers show is that there has been zero movement of evangelicals towards him relative to Kerry’s share of the vote in ’04.  McCain may not excite them, but except for the minority that will stay home or cast third party votes (Chuck Baldwin is the logical alternative for many of these voters) they have not given up on the GOP when it comes to presidential voting. 

In theory, that could change, but even if every voter that McCain is losing goes to Obama (not likely) that would still get him to just under one-third of the demographic.  Increasing Democratic vote share among evangelicals at the presidential level is the perpetual will o’ the wisp for the left that increasing black support for the GOP is on the right.  There are so many structural and policy reasons for these patterns that no single politician talking about the Joshua Generation and exhibiting some fluency with Scripture will change things very much.