Chris, totally agreed on your general point about Dems. important point I want to make on the analysis: numerically, the trend you're talking about is nowhere near historic, which is what we should be aiming for. the full Harris data from '68-present indicate to me a positive but fragile trend that could be very sensitive to outside events. not fundamental (yet). we need to think on the scale of decades, and on that scale lib self-id has been a constant 18%, so there is a ton of work to be done.

so lets continue serious discussions on proactively defining what it means to be progressive, deeper than an issues basis. I believe a good starting point would be to take the mantle of "roll up the sleeves" pragmatism and talk about why things like emissions regulation, single-payer healthcare, stem-cell research, education, diplomacy-first strategy are good issues. this isn't just about fairness, its about focusing on progress, literally, improving our country for generations to come using all tools available.

Wow, what a refeshing post. I couldn't agree more. I'm wondering if we could push this even further and talk about first principles, major themes that organize the progressive agenda. This is more than philosophy, this is about an organized identity that will form the basis for policy and talking points, well-constructed arguments that resonate with people.

So what do minimum wage, habeas corpus, pro-environment, progressive taxes, diplomacy-first (list goes on) have in common? I'll offer my own perspective here: progressives understand that liberty, prosperity, security and the common good all go hand in hand. We are open-minded. We reject false choices and top-down theories of the world that selectively ignore facts for the convenience of power and ideology. We believe in truth and results... "getting things done" is a progressive position, not centrist.

explain how your idea is proactive.

i dont see how labeling this particular idea as "reactive" adds any new insight. one could just as easily label it "proactive" if its part of a larger strategy to move the national debates away from divisive, amorphous cultural issues that have benefited the GOP for the past 20-30 years. i welcome any move to remind voters that Dems are not the bogeymen conservatives have, at times, been successful at portraying. again, ignoring those kinds of accusations has not worked. like it or not, this is a religious country.

and there's nothing mutually exclusive between a politician talking about their religion and proactively defining their platform on other issues.

is there any reason to be threatened by the rise of a "religious left"?

the anti-liberal campaign goes back much further than the 90s. the big thing that happened in the 90s was the rise of Fox and (syndicated) conservative talk radio as outlets to efficiently dissimenate propaganda.

but a lot of things were in place by then. I personally found EJ Dionne's Why American Hate Politics to be really insightful. he pubished it in the early 90s but I think it's still relevant as a historical (and definitely opinionated) account of political history after WWII.

I wouldn't make too much of 1% changes. the self-id %s have been pretty stable since the 70s, and the stuff Chris Bowers is talking about has to do with huge ideological shifts on the scale of 20,30%. at the same time, the label "liberal" has tons of baggage, and issue stances do indicate that people are more progressive than they say.

so yeah, putting out progressive candidates is only half the battle here. i think it's very important to take charge of the meaning of "progressive" or "liberal" and articulate how these viewpoints further the country and are not just weak-kneed, etc. "centrist" is such an awful philosophy because its simply reactive. for example, the "centrist" position in 2002 was to invade Iraq and has simply shifted with public opinion. but the pragmatic, progressive position was to stay out of Iraq because it was obvious that we had multiple ways of dealing with Saddam Hussein.

because the GOP has framed it that way, and simply ignoring it hasn't worked.

as someone who's as secular as it gets, I have no problem if Dem leaders want to talk about their religion if it helps other voters relate to them. provided of course, Dems keep church and state separate, and actually do accomplish things on issues I do care deeply about.

this is actually the most current Pew survey of religion and politics from what i could find. just look at the "liberals gone too far..." result. this 67% goes well beyond the evangelical GOP base.

Obama is not responsible for this impression, it existed well before he even ran for Senate.

again, I'm not claiming these voters changed their minds because of faith over one election cycle. I'm saying that, over the long run, if you take religion off the table as a distinguishing factor between the partys, there's more room to talk about other issues. this is a religious country. it is insufficient to simply deny that faith makes any difference whatsoever in someone's vote.

this is a good discussion of the role of religion as of 2003. note that 50% indicated could not vote for a "well-qualified" atheist for president. pretty dismaying to me personally, but unlikely to change much anytime soon.

so again, the point is that religion may indeed be an important component to voting behavior, depending on the circumstances of the major political debates at any given moment. not a determinant, just one factor out of many.

i completely agree that many religious voters may have gone to Dems for reasons having nothing to do with their religion, at least directly. however, the GOP has tried very hard to convince these voters that Dems and liberals in particular are hostile to their religion and "out of touch" with their way of life. this has been a talking point of theirs for the past several decades, and apparently its had some effect. not just an effect on rallying their base.

so the value I see in Obama's statements is not about people voting for Dems because of their religion, its about innoculating Dems against this charge. the charge is ridiculous, but it gets through MSM for some reason. if Dems can neutralize any kind of perceived advantage the GOP has on "religious and cultural issues" I'd argue it could make more salient other issues on which Dems have a clear advantage.

this isn't about evangelicals, it's about other religous voters such as Catholics and mainstream Protestants who are socially moderate or conservative, but are more aligned with Dems on economic issues. those are the groups that shifted b/w 04 and 06.

this is a really good point, one often overlooked in polling analyses i've seen. of course, one could look at singles vs. married controlling for age and still get confounds--perhaps married 18-24 yo are more likely to be in rural areas, or more likely to be religious.

i think it really boils down to understanding the principle factors behind political affiliation (and, importantly, change in affiliation over time). these factors could cut across obvious demographic and geographic divisions. just because we have access to a type of data doesn't mean it's important.

The main groups of religious voters we won (back) were Catholics and mainstream Protestants (not evangelicals, from what i've sees in the data).  

Foley made a difference, and a crucial question is how big this effect was on these voters, and how transient it will be. I look forward to the ANES 2006 data to look at crosstabs and control for various factors.

So far my intuition (based on data and history) is that issues like "gay marriage" are partly proxies for larger, amorphous "culture wars" that have divided many religious voters from liberal issues because they buy into the image of the "liberal elitist" who thinks religion is little more than ignorance. If it's true, that's got to change. So as an atheist, I whole-heartedly welcome the return of the religious left and say welcome.

you guys made a crucial, crucial difference. thank you