In their headlong race to the bottom, which will the Seattle Times shed faster?
{democracy:3}
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Father Jonathan Morris’ reasons the Election will be closer than you expect:
1) According to varied professional sources with whom I have spoken, there exists a proportionally high number of potential voters who are refusing to be polled or express their opinion publicly. In a historic, high-octane race like 2008, I believe there are more reasons for a McCain supporter to stay silent than for an Obama supporter. It is understandable to imagine McCain supporters fearing labels such as “racist,” “homophobe,” “single-issue-voter,” “warmonger,” or “against change,” even if the voter is none of these.
2) Similarly, pollsters have reported higher than usual numbers of undecided voters or voters still capable of changing their minds. People know Senator McCain. Do they know Senator Obama well enough to break for him this late in the game?
3) Most importantly, in 2004, pollsters were caught by surprise by the amount of voters who left the polls saying “social issues” were most influential in determining their vote. In 2008, the media has been mostly silent on these causes, focusing instead on the economy and Iraq. This focus ignores an important reality. The “Value Voters” block of mostly Evangelicals and a good percentage of conservative Catholics and others, may indeed be wrapped up in these urgent headlines, but there is no convincing data to suggest they have inverted their voting priorities, turning away from abortion, traditional marriage, limited government, etc. If Senator Kerry’s policy proposals were enough to get this voting block to the booth, Senator Obama’s policies should bring them out in droves.
So how come when I vote, it doesn’t give me the results so far?
King Blethen sacrificed hs integrity a long time ago and is busy shedding readers. I haven’t read the Seattle Times in several years and I don’t miss it.
1 I’d tend to give more credibility to Greg Palast’s theory: that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of us who should be perfectly eligible to vote will have our votes denied, lost or stolen:
http://www.truthout.org/110308A
Cynical @ 1:
The Evangelicals aren’t the reliable Republican voting block they were four years ago. Then, Rove & Co. were able to mobilize Evangelicals with the spectacle of gay couples having wedding ceremonies on the steps of the courthouses in California and Massachusets.
But in the meantime, things have happened. The Bush administration lost all credibility over a wide range of issues, from Katrina to election manipulation to Iraq to the Justice Dept. firings.
Bush & Co. made the mistake of allowing a true Evangelical into the White House to manage their “Faith-Based” programs. That Evangelical became offended and left, telling everyone how the Republicans who were really in charge, especially Rove & Cheney, laughed at the Evangelicals as a bunch of crazy dupes who were easily manipulated, and how the Faith-Based Initiatives were only a ploy to direct tax money to Republican districts to support Republican incumbents.
Also, having a politically-connected pastor caught hiring gay prostitutes disillusioned many to the church being prominent in the political process. Jerry Falwell’s death, and the increasing political and ministerial irrelevency of Pat Robertson, may have marked the end of the “Moral Majority” coalition upon which the Republicans have relied since the Reagan years.
My own Evangelical pastor, who’s solidly Republican personally, has gone out of his way this year to make sure that everyone in the church understands that the church doesn’t take a political position. Politics divides, and our church seeks to be inclusive of all, politics aside.
Personally, I’ve seen lots of Evangelicals who repeat the mantra of far-right-wing-radio jocks, but I’ve also seen an increasing number who thoughtfully disagree, and have found that it’s perfecly possible to be both a Democrat and an Evangelical. For many, the fact that the Republicans had effective control of all three branches of government for quite a few years and were unable or unwilling to make any headway on their primary issues – abortion, gay marriage, and prayer in schools – convinced them that the Republican Party is quite happy to use those issues to garner Evangelical support, but is unwilling to commit any political capital to actually resolving and defending those issues.
And finally, Evangelicals are not exclusively poor, but are predominately working-class. Many have recognized that their support of the Republican Party has only resulted in a continued deterioration of their economic well being over several decades. For a community which prides itself on hard work and taking personal responsibility to take care of their families, being adrift in a global economy is depressing. For many of them, no matter how hard you work, any morning you could awake and find your job gone because some CEO decided he could get a bigger bonus by out-sourcing it or simply running the company in the ground. The Republican Party has been just fine with that, and they are willing to take a chance on change.
Last summer a Newsweek columnist was touring the South and finding suprise support for Obama in many places he didn’t expect. Attending a church BBQ fundraiser in a small town in Tennessee, he overheard two truckers talking about how disgusted they were with the Republican Party, how every year it was getting harder to make a living, and how they were planning on voting for Obama. “If McCain can’t even count on the support of a couple of truck drivers attending an Evangelical church BBQ for their support, how was he ever going to win the Presidency?”, he wondered (paraphrased from memory).
So… it’s not 2004.
In answer to Goldy’s survey question, I’m thinking that “all of the above” is the best answer.
@1
I never seen so many of our fellow Americans who are silent on this election.
Most Republicans and Independents have no phone listing.
Integrity is always the easiest thing to lose, but I would hope that readers would soon follow.
Maybe I was wrong about Goldy not having anything to blog about if Obama, Gregoire, and Burner all win tomorrow.
Seems like his obsession with the Seattle Times will keep him occupied on a daily basis. Was he turned down for a job there or something? This sounds personal.
When the times employs people like Emily Heffter (Darcy Burner’s pimp) and releases her columns to the AP with the truth edited out, I gave up my subscription.
Is “Christine” the puddybitch?
That’s OK Christine – I’m sure you can read the comics somewhere else.
Nice job using the P-word. Your mommy will spank you tonight for that.
Now go on to the kitchen for your milk and cookies so you don’t have to go to time-out for using naughty words.
I dislike the Times’s endorsements, but you’ve got to give them some credit for integrity. If they were focused just on the bottom line, they would endorse mostly Democrats, since Democrats dominate their market. And unlike in 2000, their endorsements don’t seem driven by estate tax self-interest.
I scored it: Integrity goes first, followed by workers (involuntarily), followed by readers.
Yeah, I know, it’s logical to argue the readers will follow integrity out the door. But I think Frank would fire his workers (especially the union ones) so fast the readers would have trouble keeping up.
They have any integrity left to shred?
I can’t understand why anyone who calls him or herself a liberal or a Democrat would still subscribe to the Times.
Their readers. They’ve already lost their integrity.
Trick question. The Seattle Times lost their integrity long ago.
The real question is when they’ll realize that they’ve lost it.
@5:
Three things to also keep in mind…
There are Evangelicals, and there are Charismatics, among what I will call the “post-Catholic” Christian population. (Methodists, Presbyterians, etc…I’m a Lutheran, so technically we’re a “Catholic” subgroup because our services and doctrine are relatively similar.)
Evangelicals who are politically active tend to approach politics differently from Charismatics, and the latter group has been much more dismayed by the latter half of the Bush administration than folks give credit.
On top of that, the majority of the newest generations of Evangelicals are approaching politics differently than those that have come before. Yes, some are angry that, once again, the Republicans have not given them some of the policy decisions they want most, but some are also beginning to seek different issues being placed higher up on the agenda, such as with respect to the environment vs. global warming.
Finally, as you’ve referenced, fear is simply not as effective as it used to be on some Evangelical and Charismatic congregations. Or, perhaps to be more accurate, the fear has changed from a focus against “the Other” to basic survival, day to day.
Stuff like abortion is still going to be a hot button issue with these folks on the whole (you can’t expect an immediate change of any dramatic sort on something like this, which began pretty much as a reaction to the social mores of the Romans way back when), but the Evangelical Christian community is going to be very different within the next five years or so than what we see now. (And that doesn’t even take into account the growth of African and South American interpretations of Christianity coming our way.)
Some folks will go to further extremes, but the folks that adjust to a changing world while maintaining their core beliefs are going to be the ones that remain most influential over time.
palamedes @ 19
As a proud Lutheran, I don’t think I’m quite willing to consider myself part of a “Catholic subgroup.” Sure, there are liturgical similarities if you attend mass in either church. But, that little Pope thing that Catholics still adhere to is a distinction that led to the Reformation. We just don’t believe, as Lutherans, that some other human stands between us and God. I am most fond of Catholics and respect them as fellow Christians. Sorry to go a little off point, but the Reformation was one of the more significant events in Western history and the significance of that event was breaking the stranglehold of the Catholic Church on Europe. Do we see here why we need a separation between church and state? Christians can’t even agree on religious doctrine, let alone political policy.
@20:
Understood on both your points. I could go to town an do all sorts of breakdowns of Christian subgroups, but it would quickly start to look half past nuts. (Which it can be at times.)
I would say, though, that Catholics and Lutherans, even with the Catholics having the Pope, are much more similar liturgically, which is where I was drawing the line, more or less. Calvin vs Luther, if you want it in shorthand.
One of the ironies regarding church vs. state in this country is that, for a long time, one of the most adamant groups advocating freedom of worship and separation of church and state were the Baptists. This is in large part because they were one of the most harassed denominations in the early history of America, especially immediately after the American Revolution.
With the breaking away of the Southern Baptists in the 1840s, and their becoming decisively conservative and rigid in the 1980s, plus the formation of increasingly conservative gatherings of Baptists in the 1930s and again in the late 1940s, this denomination has tended to retain the fear of its old days, but not as much the desire for religious freedom and separation of church and state it once had. (One has to be careful with this point, because individual Baptist congregations can vary a great deal in terms of what they find acceptable and not acceptable.)
It’s a shame, because they’ve produced some very fine universities that still take great pride in the original focus on freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.
Palamedes @ 19: In my church’s theology “Charismatics” has a different meaning, but it’s not relevent to this discussion so I’ll leave it there. I know what you meant – there are lots of Protestant denominations aside from those lumped together under the somewhat pliable “Evangelical” label. (I’ve asked many pastors for a good definition of that label, and I never get the same answer twice).
Proud Leftist @ 20: “Christians can’t even agree on church doctine, let alone political philosophy”. Boy, you can say that again! Lots of denominational splits have occured over the smallest things! I’ve seen shouting matches over whether the rapture occures pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, or mid-tribulation! In one such dispute, I asked those arguing what difference it made in how we were to conduct our lives. They both gave me a blank look, and after a bit had to agree that it made no difference.
As for the issue of separation of church & state, it is unfortunate that many churches are in favor of such separation when they are not incorporated into the power structure, but against it when they are.
Goldy, you really are a horse’s ass. The Times’ financial troubles are a combination of the migration of classified ads to Craig’s List and being tethered to the P-I, which has lost nearly 100,000 readers in recent years. You couldn’t carry the notebooks of the journalists who work at either newspaper.
Your gloating at the struggles of a daily newspaper reflect the shallowness of both your thought process and, more importantly, your character … such as it is.