Sucking up to evangelicals

No, I still haven't gotten that video of Sam Seder's introduction of Howard Dean at YKos up yet. However, since my theory of the reason for the obsession the right has with John Edwards' haircut and unfairly youthful appearance seems to be bearing out, given what has come out from under rocks into the comments, those of you at home might be interested in the video from the breakout session after the debate on Saturday. No, this isn't my video, because my camera's batteries went dead about 2/3 of the way through, but it'll do:

Note in particular how he answers the question from "the atheist guy". It's rare these days to see a politician acknowledge that a) it's about being moral, not about being religious; and b) you can be moral without being religious.

I was somewhat nonplussed to hear Howard Dean invoke Rick Warren in his keynote speech last weekend, because when I hear about "reaching out to evangelicals", all I hear is "throwing women under the bus." Yes, there may be younger evangelicals who are concerned about global warming and poverty, but the bottom line with evangelical Christianity is "I don't understand it....it must be magic!" (™ Marc Maron) This is all well and good if that helps you get through the day, but it has no place in public policy and it sure as hell has no place in anything requiring scientific inquiry. Barbara at Mahablog and Steven at Booman Tribune put this notion that Democrats have to reach out to religious voters in perspective, and points out that sucking up to these people is exactly the WRONG thing to do -- because like it or not, these religious voters aren't buying it.