Brad Carson: Vote Righteously! (Why I lost the election)

[procopia]

"I don't remember when I first realized that my campaign for United States Senate was in trouble. But one moment stands out. I was in Sallisaw, Oklahoma..."

(snip)

"As I arrived at the church, my wife and I were given the church bulletin, which outlined the weekly selection of hymns and Bible readings. On the back of the bulletin, atop the blank space reserved for copious note-taking during the sermon, was the heading: "wwjv? pro-life or pro-death?" (I favored the partial-birth abortion ban but opposed overturning Roe v. Wade.) In the sanctuary, a 20-by-20-foot depiction of a fetus looked down upon the assembled throng from a projection screen. Superimposed upon the unsettling image--which morphed to show the fetus in various stages of gestation--was fact after fact about abortions in America."

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041122&s=diarist112204

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[RoyGBiv]

1. Feh ...

Now that the election is over and I no longer feel obligated to support a Democrat just to try to get the Senate leadership I am relieved of having to defend this individual.

He lost because in the popular mind he made no clear distinction between himself and Tom Coburn. With the Conservative tilt of Oklahoma politics, that means the people go with the more conservative of the two. He failed to harp on the very real problems with Coburn, pretending Coburn was an honorable opponent when in fact he was and is a racist, an economic elitist who has sterilized women because they were poor and black, and someone who all but admits to committing Medicare fraud. Carson jumped on none of that, and I feel as though some of his campaign people personally lied to me about his committment to real progressive change.

Screw 'im. He failed us, and I have no sympathy. I hope his political career is over.

[procopia]

2. His description of the church and service

is disturbing to me. Without naming names, the church was endorsing a candidate. When does a church cross the political line?

[RoyGBiv]

3. Good question...

Wish I had a good answer.

Here's the problem.

The resistance to churches endorsing political candidates has a long and complex history rooted in foundation of the country. However, it is actually an extrapolation of the church and state separation ideology of the founders. The Founders didn't want the state telling churches what do to, but the reverse was not necessarily the case. Churches, as organizations of people, were perfectly free to try to influence the political debate.

Over the course of our history as a nation, this kind of thing has often been used by the minority interest to demand further rights. For example, anti-slavery sentiment was almost exclusively a religious issue for many years until the religious institutions began pressing it in the public arena. Guess what happened. Those in power who wanted to maintain the slave system tried to limit the influence of churches in forming people's political opinions. Likewise, in the period between the Civil War and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of the 1960's, churches formed the linchpin that kept public dissent among blacks organized and forceful. Again those in power tried to limit this influence, making sure to revoke tax exempt status of, particularly, those black churches that encouraged people to vote against the Jim Crow dominated power structure.

So, which way do we go? It's not surprising that churches today are using the same tactics that more progressive movements have used in previous eras. They learned that the best way to destroy progressivism was to use its own tools against it.

There's a saying that bad cases make bad laws. If we are reactionaries in the fight against the fringe evangelicals and fundamentalists, we become no better than they were and in fact close a door for ourselves when all this current mess culminates and we have no political outlets for our dissent.

Put simply, it's a difficult question, and as I said originally, I don't have a good answer.

[utoo]

4. DITTO

enough said...I circulated a "clothespin vote" email...encouraging people to vote for the "neo-con lite"...although it might offend them to do so.. he sounded like a bigot, acted like a bigot... it disgusted me to vote for him and I told his campaign the same thing..

personally, I feel no sorrow that he lost!

[newyawker99]

7. Hi utoo!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[fishwax]

5. Amen to that

I tried to be enthusiastic about his campaign, but couldn't ever quite get over the hump, at least once his commercials came out.

And that pseudo-self-righteous drivel that he wrote analyzing the election is way off base. 85% of that church wasn't going to vote for him no matter how far to the right he ran, and the other 15% weren't likely either. Why run further to the right for such a small number of votes. He ran as conservative as he could and still got barely a whiff of the white evangelical vote. It isn't worth it.

[RummyTheDummy]

6. He lost for one simple reason

He ran against an evangelical christain. Oklahoma voters just LOVE evangelical christians, even if they're mentally unstable like Coburn. These people would vote for Sadam Hussein if he established citezenship here, converted to christianity and ran against a democrat. he would win and he would win easily. end of story.