Being/seeming religious is a vintage Democratic Leadership Council recommendation.
At the website of the now-defunct Democratic Leadership Council, I saw a recommendation that Democratic politicians not attempt to "hide" their religion. The hint simply assumed that all Democratic politicians had a religion of some kind, something that I very much doubt. IMO, the implication was to display "your" religion, whether you have/practiced one or not. For some Democrats, this can be complicated.
As some may know, long before incorporation of the DLC, religion was an issue in the Presidential campaign of Senator John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President (though not the first Catholic Presidential hopeful, a distinction owned by Al Smith.)
At one points, while candidate JFK was making a speech, someone shouted out something about JFK's religion and was met with some booing. However, JFK admonished the crowd, "No, no let him speak," or something similar. (This type scenario always makes me wonder about staging, especially when we see how some hecklers of Presidents and Presidential hopefuls are treated when their comments do not provide an opportunity for the politician to say something he wanted to say.)
JFK then famously allayed allegedly widespread fears that a Catholic President would take orders from the Pope. However, the issue of a Catholic President was not, in the 1960s, complicated by all the issues that were to confront Kerry in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_presidential_campaign,_2004
Kerry's maternal grandparents were Episcopalian and his paternal grandparents were Jews who had converted to Catholicism and changed their surname. For years, politicians and ordinary citizens alike had assumed that Kerry was Irish Catholic, like JFK's maternal grandfather, "Honey Fitz," Joe Kennedy and JFK himself, a very good thing for a politician to be in Massachusetts in the 1960s.
By the time Kerry was well-known, the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast had become an important--and televised--political event. Year after year, voters heard Massachusetts politicians, most of them Irish Catholic, say things directly to Kerry that assumed that Kerry was Irish Catholic. Kerry never attempted to dispel their unmistakable assumption.
If Kerry tried to flaunt his Catholicism, as the DLC recommended, would the truth be teased out eventually; and, if it were teased out, what would happen? Perhaps that was one reason why Kerry did not make a big issue of running as a Catholic Presidential hopeful. (The truth did surface before the election. My purely subjective assessment is that it had very little impact on votes, even in Boston.)
Aside from his personal situation, Kerry faced issues that JFK had not had to face, namely women's rights to reproductive choice and various rights of members of the GLBT community. JFK had run in 1964. Griswold v. Connecticut (birth control) was not decided until 1965; Roe v. Wade was not decided until 1973 and Bowers v. Hardwick (sodomy in the privacy of one's home) was not decided until 1986. But, by 2004, a candidate could address issues of reproductive and GLBT rights one way and the Catholic Church, by this time militant about these issues, would respond harshly and publicly. However, if the candidate took the opposite positions, Democratic voters might respond harshly and publicly.
Some Catholic clergy did try to make an issue of Kerry's Catholicism, and the right piled on. (Example: http://catholickerrywatch.blogspot.com/2004_08_01_archive.html ) However, their attempts did not get the traction that they may have if Kerry had tried to "flaunt" his Catholicism in any way. Still, Kerry lost the election.
AMY SULLIVAN: Very shortly after the election, John Kerry called one of his close advisers, and among the things that he wanted to talk about, kind of revisiting the mistakes that they had made, was religion and both his inability to stick up for himself when attacked over his faith, but also his campaign's unwillingness to really target religious voters. And he said, you know, "I got the religion thing wrong, didn't I? " and his advisers said, "Well, yes, sir, you did."
http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/transcripts/hour-six.html
My suspicion is that the advisor referred to by Ms. Sullivan may have been Robert Shrum, of the firm of Greenberg Carville Shrum (yes, that Carville):
Robert M. Shrum (born 1943) is an American political consultant, who has worked on numerous Democratic campaigns, including the losing
presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry. In eight elections (for either the presidential nomination or for the presidency itself), Shrum's candidates have never won.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Shrum (To be fair, Shrum has advised winners, just never anyone who won the Presidency.)
Also in God in America, the panel claimed that the Democratic Party had had an epiphany about keeping religion out of politics after 2004 exit polls showed that Kerry had done better with (for want of a better word) "secular" voters than he had with religious voters. This is false. In reality, the 2004 Democratic Platform contained a number of references to God, including a reference that flirts heavily with creationism, all very much in line with the DLC recommendation. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29613
Not long after Kerry's loss, I saw Clinton on TV (I stumbled on the program near its end, so I don't know details.) He went on for a while about how much better Democrats were than Republicans. Someone from the audience or the media asked him why it was, then, that Kerry lost the 2004 Presidential. Clinton took a few seconds, then said something like, "You know, when Obama announced for the Senate, he did it with his pastor at his side." (Hindsight's a hoot sometimes.) And here is Bubba on why Kerry lost the 2003 Presidential:
The party had been "crazy" not to engage the American heartland in a conversation about religion and values, the former president said.
Mr Clinton, still an influential voice in his party, suggested that too many voters believed Democrats were against family and morality but in favour of abortion and gay marriage. "If you let people believe that your party doesn't believe in faith or family, doesn't believe in work and freedom - that's our fault," he said.
Mr Kerry had failed to make it clear during the campaign that he did not support legalised gay marriage. "He said it once or twice but not a thousand times in small towns," Mr Clinton said.
During his presidency, he (Clinton) said, he had worked with faith-based organisations and set up an office of religious affairs to reach out to Muslims, Jews and evangelical Christians. In that time, the number of abortions fell by more than 20 per cent - and has since risen under the Bush administration.
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4b8cdcd8-2f9a-11d9-984e-00000e2511c8.html#axzz3ljgAKZ5A
Remember, according to establishment Democrat memes, when a liberal loses, it's because he's a liberal. However, when a centrist loses, it's never because he's a centrist. Carter, for example, supposedly lost because then liberal Kennedy had challenged Carter in the primary. Oddly enough, when centrist Mondale lost, it was supposedly because Mondale was a liberal. (Danged liberals! One way or the other, they force the centrists to lose elections.) http://www.democraticunderground.com/128046511 (In politics, the conventional wisdom may be neither conventional nor wisdom. Discuss.)
Kerry had, in his youth, certainly given the impression of being liberal. By 2004, though, Kerry was a founding member of the Senate New Democrat Coalition and a Senator who had voted for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. Dean was seen as the liberal Democratic candidate in that primary, even though Dean was relatively moderate on issues other than health care and the war in Iraq. At that, Dean claimed Kerry had acted like a Republican on the campaign trail.
Kerry's run was plagued by a number of things. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1280&pid=50201 And Dimson was a war-time incumbent and Americans have never voted out a war time incumbent. But, sure, let's blame the 2004 loss on Kerry's failure to pretend he was a wingnut, as DLCERs thought he should.
IOW, according to the DLC, DLC candidate Kerry supposedly lost only because he was not quite DLC enough.
So, dear DUers who are surprised that Hillary is running a "values" campaign, you should have read more at dlc.org before the website disappeared. But, no worries. I'm sure all the DLC papers are safe and sound at the Clinton Presidential Library. So, if you're ever in Arkansas....
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Or end his stump speeches with "God Bless America."
