April 24, 2008
As with most analysts who cover the 2008 election I receive my share of spin-related e-mails (referred to from here on in as "Spreemails") from the campaigns of those running for high office.
A Spreemail may be described thusly: a political infomercial directed exclusively at pundits in hopes of getting these clueless dimwits to tow a presidential aspirant's party line in their forthcoming blogs, columns, radio shows, web videos, mixed media installations, etc. In an effort to quell the inveterate suspicions of aforesaid pundits, a Spreemail will often, but not always, contain references to credible journalistic and scholarly sources.
Let me be frank: I have a soft spot for Spreemails. They suffuse me with feelings of importance and self-esteem. The only thing I fancy more than a good Spreemail is the (very rare) Direct Invitation From A Campaign Operative "to go out someday and have a beer." I bet I could order some 'wings too, if I asked politely. But I am divigating.
As much as I adore receiving talking points to work into my bi-weekly posts, I am usually impervious to their desired effects. Case in point: On a Saturday in March I was sent a Spreemail from the Obama folks about a speech (or more appropriately, a sermon) that the Senator had just given at the University of Texas Brownsville.
The tranquility of my Sabbath non-observance having been interrupted by this most fascinating and unsolicited transmission, I proceeded to write my "Huckobama" column (now translated into 16 languages including SwitzerDeutsch). Not only did that post make me 268 new admirers (see my comments section) but it also rendered me vulnerable to the charge of having made the whole thing up!
For the address I was citing was posted nowhere on the internet, just in the Spreemail. That's what so great about Spreemails!
Over the past few weeks my inbox has received its fair share of messages from the Clinton and Obama campaigns with subject headings like: "Catholic League--Kudos to Hillary Clinton: Bush Should Boycott Olympic Opening"; "Beliefnet: Democratic Battle for Catholics Intensifies"; "Catholics for Obama Launch National Advisory Council"; "Obama Statement Pending the Arrival of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI".
I read these carefully because the Spreemails never lie. Check that: they always lie in the sense of giving one a full and balanced picture. But they tell the truth about a campaign's hopes and fears. In retrospect it is clear that both had identified Catholics as a battleground constituency weeks before the Pennsylvania primary.
Watching the returns on Tuesday night I was privy to a slice of Spreemail life that I regret having witnessed. At 8:24 pm the Obama people sent out: "BREAKING: Obama Overperforms Among Catholics and Wins Protestants." That claim was somewhat difficult to reconcile with the note I received at 9:28 from the opposing camp: "FYI: PA Religious Exit Polling - Clinton wins Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Voters." This was followed at 10:38 by the rather un-Christian "FYI: Dallas Morning News Religion Blog: "Hillary Clinton whups [Barack Obama in the Largest Categories]"
Leaving the claims about Protestants aside for now, let me confirm that Clinton did in fact carry Catholics by a bruising 68% to 32%. This statistic is lending credence to a growing chorus of analysts who say Obama has a problem with this constituency.
We will, undoubtedly, be discussing this at length in coming weeks. Permit me to briefly float one explanation for this state of affairs. I wish to claim--and I stress this is a first-go hypothesis--that Obama fares poorly among Catholics for the same reason that Huckabee did. Namely, these Americans are put off by Protestant presidential candidates who go too heavy on the Faith and Values stuff.
Admittedly, my hypothesis runs into difficulties when we recall that Catholics gave the majority of their votes to George W. Bush in 2004. Then again, strange as it may sound, Bush's rhetoric was rarely as relentlessly Christ-y as that of Huck and Obama. Only with the help of continued study and further Spreemails will I be able to refine this theory in the next few posts.
For more information about religion and the candidates check out Faith 2008 by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.
Jacques Berlinerblau is the Rabbi Harold White Chair in Jewish Civilization in Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service and senior advisor to the Center for Jewish Civilization, where he was director from 2006 to June 2020. Berlinerblau has published on a wide variety of issues ranging from the sociology of heresy and modern Jewish intellectuals to African-American and Jewish-American relations.
