Is Obama Targeting The Atheist Vote?

A strange article on the catholic News Agency, citing a recent analysis, makes the hypothesis Obama has not shot himself in the leg with the HHS mandate, but be expressly wooing the non-Christian and non-believer vote, moving from the assumption that the Catholic vote has been slowly drifting away anyway and the numbers are rapidly tipping the  scale in favour of non-believers.

Firstly, allow me to say I am perfectly persuaded Obama is a Christian as I am a communist, and if he has some affection for a religion – meant as a cultural, not spiritual phenomenon – this is most certainly Islam, not Christianity.

Still, I think I should examine the argument and say why I disagree and think the Obama people have simply vastly understated the price they would have to pay if they anger the catholic world.

1) It seems strange to me that whilst we have been told for so many years – and have had impressive demonstrations, see G.W. Bush – that the Catholic vote can make Presidents, suddenly it would pay to woo the enemies of Catholicism. Certainly, in the course of a generational change this might happen, but Catholics are not getting less numerous, nor are they getting less Catholic (than they already are). Vocations in the US have been on the increase for many years now, and the vote has been moving progressively to the Republicans,which is certainly in part due not to the fact that they aren’t Catholics anymore, but that they still are (with all the caveats about the state of the US Catholic culture, of course).

2) Which in my eyes neatly introduces my second point: Democrats lose the Catholic vote, at least in part, because Catholics understand Democrats do not  protect Catholic values: the idea that as they are losing them in instalments be better to be losing them altogether seems to me a rather suicidal logic.  If Obama were not so blinded by ideology, he would be thinking day and night what to do to please them, not to anger them. 

3) Catholics are spread only in certain parts of the countries, and are a powerful force only in a dozen or so of them. But Catholics are, most importantly, crucial in key States like Florida and Ohio: who on earth would willingly set to sacrifice their vote in such important battlegrounds? 

4) The theory goes that for every Catholic you lose you will earn at least one atheist. Very strange. I think I am not very far from the mark thinking the majority of the atheist vote is already solidly in Democratic hands, and many of the Republican atheists are socially conservative enough not to want to go against established religion even if they don’t believe in God themselves. Where is this huge untapped reservoir of non-voting Democratic atheists only waiting for the HHS controversy to go vote Obama & the gang? On the contrary, the prospective of losing the Catholic vote is painfully real, and backed by the impressive fact of  more than 55 millions voters. The idea of willingly cross them is, in my eyes, pure madness. Don’t believe me? Ask John Kerry.

5) The fallout on the Protestants is completely ignored. In fact, Santorum’s candidature is being propelled in decisive measure by protestant votes, and Protestants can be mobilised as well as atheists. Granted, they vote Republican in their majority already, but there is a lot of potential loss here anyway.

In conclusion, it seems to me Obama has, very simply, done something very stupid whose consequences he had not foreseen, and is now trapped by a controversy he allowed to go too far before noticing the quicksand was all around him. If you ask me, there is no “cunning plan” at all, and political analysts merely try to give, in retrospect, some sense to this senseless ideological entrenchment, initially started in the illusion it would not cause any big conflict, and no so difficult to get out of without loss of face. Exit without loss of face the Government has already attempted a couple of times, with the only result of making the choice between all out fall out or retreat more difficult.

But it’s a lose-lose for Obama. If he caves in he loses face, and if he doesn’t he loses desperately needed votes.

Six months of ferocious controversy on the HHS mandate, and good luck in Florida. I so hope Archbishop Dolan & Co. continue the fight to the end, and step up the tone in Summer.

Mundabor