In light of what appears to be a decisive victory for Barack Obama and the Democrats, there is one critical task, to my mind, that must be undertaken in the long road to building a long-term Democratic majority. The James Dobsons, Tony Perkinses and Phyllis Schlaflys of the world must be completely and absolutely marginalized, and relegated to the same status as the likes of Lyndon Larouche, the militias and the skinheads. The religious right has poisoned our political culture for far too long, and now is the time to ensure that it either doesn't rise again or doesn't do so for a long time. Some trends I saw on Tuesday night make me think we may be on the cusp of starting the process of marginalizing the religious right--and not a moment too soon.
Earlier, I wrote that in every election since 1992, we've started out with 245 electoral votes out of the gate--171 in the bag and another 74 where we have a prohibitive advantage. It now looks like Obama will win at least 364 electoral votes--and it's no coincidence that 31 percent of those extra 119 votes came from Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, all located in regions where the religious right has traditionally held sway. We need only to look at two races to find proof that the religious right's time might well be past--the Senate race in North Carolina and the presidential race in Colorado
We all knew that Liddy Dole essentially lost her Senate seat with her desperate attempt to stir up religious hatred against Kay Hagan. Liddy's tactics might well have worked back in oh, say, 1980 or 1990. But with the large number of Northern and Midwestern expatriates in Charlotte, the Triangle and the Triad, we all knew that game plan would go nowhere. However, I don't think even the most optimistic of us expected the nine-point trouncing that Hagan handed Dole on Tuesday night. The traditional line you might be hearing nationally is that most of these new voters are what helped Hagan win by such a decisive margin. But there's a lot more to it than that. Take a good look at the county-by-county results. See that lovely swatch of blue in the east? Most of those counties are home to "Jessecrats" that helped Jesse Helms hold onto this seat--but Hagan won nearly all of them, and won them big. The message here is that even in a Bible Belt state like North Carolina, stirring up religious division is no longer a winning strategy--in fact, it'll only get your clock cleaned in November.
I knew that Obama was going to win Colorado by running it up in Denver and the less-wingnutty Denver suburbs. However, I figured Colorado Springs alone would be enough to keep Obama's victory margin there within the 3-5 point range. So when I woke up Wednesday to see Obama had won by eight points, I was shocked. And even more shocked to discover he'd won Arapahoe and Jefferson counties--where the religious right has traditionally held sway--by double-digit margins. It is clear now that one leg of the religious right's base in Colorado has been sawn off short.
I believe that one major error we made after Clinton's win in 1992 was underestimating the anger his win generated among the religious right. As I've said several times, there is something fundamentally wrong when you have areas in the South voting Republican by huge margins when their economic demographics suggest they have absolutely no business voting Republican. While Clinton did most of the job in rebuilding our party by bringing Reagan Democrats in the Midwest and Northeast to their senses, he didn't do enough to win back voters in the South and Southwest who had been swayed by the religious right. He had a big chance to do so--after all, Bush Sr. never really recovered from the way the religious right ran wild at the '92 GOP convention. However, Clinton missed this chance. We all know what happened after that--the religious right was able to recover well enough to play the pivotal role in the 1994 Republican wave, as well as lay the groundwork for Bush Jr. to win in 2000.
Based on what happened in North Carolina and Colorado this cycle, we have a similar opportunity to make sure the religious right doesn't have a chance to get back up again. Let's seize it.