Life of the Party

The Bible says you judge a society by how it treats the poorest and most vulnerable. On healthcare, on housing, you talk that way. You talk about the environment, about being good stewards of God's creation. You talk about the ethics of war. And then you say, "Abortion is a moral issue. We've got too many unwanted pregnancies in America, way too many. Let's work together, pro-life and pro-choice, to really target this abortion rate. We're all for that; it should be common ground. This is a tragic choice. We're not going to give up on the legal option for abortion, but let's make it rare." That kind of candidate would have won.

You sound a lot like Hillary Clinton.

Well ... [laughs]. That kind of candidate would have won this last election. I'm convinced.

Is there a similar approach to the question of gay marriage?

You know, the right says, "Vote against gay marriage and it proves you're for the family." This is a surrogate for saying you care for the family. But this is the wrong surrogate, and the Democrats should have taken that away. They should have said, "Families are in crisis. The breakdown of families is a huge problem, not just for the poor but for all classes. Kids are falling between the cracks." So you have that conversation, and then you say, "Most who are religious people also support some kind of legal protection for same-sex couples."

You can be pro-family and pro-civil rights at the same time. You can win with that. But you've got to get to it as a fairness question, a civil rights question. You don't get started by saying, "I'm for gay marriage."

Energy against gay people is coming from two sources. There's this very ugly, hateful, homophobic violent attitude -- the Matthew Shepard stuff -- and that has to be fought against and resisted. The other part is concern from people who are worried about their families, and they've been sold a bill of goods that that has something to do with gay people. That piece, we've got to disentangle.

You've described your book tour as a series of town meetings, and you've begun to talk of a "movement" springing up around the ideas in "God's Politics." Are you thinking about ways to institutionalize it or build on it? And can that work to the benefit of the Democratic Party?

We're starting to have some success on the ground in changing the [perception] of faith and politics, and in winning over a lot of moderate evangelicals and Catholics to a very progressive agenda. But the Democrats have to do their part, too, if they expect ever to appeal to these people. We're doing a lot of things. After [an appearance on] the Jon Stewart show, we reached a whole new kind of audience that had never heard that there's a progressive religious option. We've gotten thousands of e-mails from young people who say, "I didn't know you could be Christian and care about the poor or care about the environment or be against the war in Iraq. I never knew. Sign me up." So we're having some great success out there, and I'm really encouraged.

When it comes to closing the deal with those kinds of people, how important is the candidate that the Democrats run in 2008?

Totally. You saw Bill Bradley's piece in the Times about how the Republicans have this machine, and how who's at the top, who's the placeholder, isn't that important. The Democrats don't have a clear structure.

I spoke with a leading Democrat in D.C. -- you'd know who it was -- and he said, "You know, if the average Democratic canvasser ever went to the front door of a home and was asked, 'Tell me what your party is for,' he'd have to make it up. He'd just have to make it up." So in the absence of that, the candidate becomes crucial. I'm not endorsing, you know, Barack Obama, because he's probably not going to run for president anytime soon, if ever. But that kind of candidate -- forward looking, building bridges, comfortable with the language of faith, speaks in a moral vocabulary ... Barack is going to make faith in politics one of his signature issues. Remember when he said at the convention, "We worship an awesome God in the blue states"? That kind of candidate would be very, very appealing to these moderate religious voters.

But it's hard to think of a Democrat in a position to run for president in 2008 who would have that kind of appeal.

It is. It is. So that's going to be the issue. On the [positive] side, we've really had some success in the last several months in changing the debate in the media and on the ground. We've been quite stunned by the success of the book. But it's not about the book. It's that the country is really tired of the monologue, tired of not having their voices represented.

Do you think there's some connection between the success of the book -- or the success of the "movement" -- and the Republicans' overreaching on things like the Terri Schiavo case?

Absolutely. These guys are saying you're not a Christian unless you're for all of Bush's nominees. Well, even conservatives think this is nuts. I think they're overreaching. They're giving us a gift: They've been winning political battles, and now they're in the White House, that's true. On the other hand, people are really tired of their definition of religion. There's such an openness and a hunger for another way to be a person of faith or a Christian or religious. I'm finding it every single night.

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