Can Obama Win Over Evangelicals?

By Steven Waldman - Wall Street Journal
Friday, May 09, 2008 - Web Link
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May 7, 2008

If Bill Clinton was the first white to be a black president, could Barack Obama be the first non-evangelical to be an evangelical president?

Huh? — you might be grunting.

If Sen. Obama can’t even win moderate white Catholics –- and he lost them again yesterday in Indiana -– then how on earth could he win evangelicals, the most reliable, conservative base of the Republican Party? He’s pro-choice, pro-gay-rights, and his connection to Rev. Jeremiah Wright has many moderate religious voters worried.

And yet, if he’s the nominee, Obama has a real chance at winning substantial evangelical support.

First, evangelicals are in a period of de-alignment from the Republican Party. The leading evangelical pollster George Barna found that only 29% of “born again” Christians now say they support Republicans, compared with 62% in 2004. That doesn’t mean they’ll flock to Democrats -– they could end up voting Republican just as much ever -– but large numbers are up for grabs.

Second, Sen. Obama has been working harder for their support than any other Democrat in recent memory. In his book “The Audacity of Hope”, instead of describing the religious right as a grotesque, right-wing power grab (as many on the left do), Sen. Obama said that its rise stemmed from Christians “feeling mocked and under attack.” Far from casting them as bigots, he declared that “most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe.”