Speaking of Bible stuff..
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/christians-kamala-can-pull-evangelical-voters-away-donald-trump-rcna167561
How I’ve been convincing Christians they don’t have to vote Republican
Democrats need to embrace the idea that evangelicals, and especially white male evangelicals, are worth winning and can be won.
By Doug Pagitt, executive director of Vote Common Good
During the last month, Christians for Kamala joined the ranks of groups supporting Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. In so doing, they stand beside groups as wide-ranging as Comics for Kamala and Deadheads for Kamala. Because Harris has shown she will include us all in her vision for the United States and bring together what has been torn apart, all of these groups have seized upon the newfound enthusiasm among the electorate since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Harris.
A religious coalition such as this entering the chat is an important step in the right direction, and, if built upon, could help sway enough movable religious voters in critical battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. What’s more, it could mean breaking the stronghold that MAGA forces have on many of our country’s evangelical voters. Thanks in part to the cooperation of so many self-identified Christian voters, the MAGA movement has seized control of the Republican Party and helped lead our country down a dark, democracy-threatening path.
Central to our work at Vote Common Good, I spend a lot of my time traveling the country speaking to voters, particularly evangelical and Catholic voters who are hardwired into voting Republican, working to get them to break out of those patterns. What I’ve learned is that most don’t want or need their elected leader to be like them, but they really do want their leader to like them. It wasn’t clear that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton liked evangelical and Catholic men when she ran for president in 2016, and it remains largely unclear to many of these voters in 2024 if Kamala Harris does. Trump, on the other hand, probably doesn’t like them, but he put his arms around these voters in a transactional exchange, and he promised and in some cases delivered them power.
But on the trail in 2020, 2022 and this year, I’ve gleaned the reason many evangelical and Christian voters ultimately leave Trump: his obvious lack of kindness. A poll that my organization Vote Common Good commissioned in 2020 showed that in swing states, Trump’s lack of kindness was driving evangelical and Catholic voters away in large enough numbers to potentially affect the outcome of the election.
Voters typically realize that the way they vote reflects on them. And those religious voters who defected from Trump didn’t like the way his unkindness reflected on them, whether it be putting migrant children in cages, the way he treats women, the way he treats the press, the way he treats nearly everyone who left his administration and the way he treats democracy itself. Many of these voters know that’s not the behavior they want their children to emulate.
The Harris campaign clearly knows it has an opportunity here. The choice of Tim Walz as vice presidential nominee is in no small part evidence of that. But it isn’t nearly enough. Democrats more broadly need to embrace the idea that evangelicals, and especially white male evangelicals, are worth winning and can be won without the party compromising its values.
What it’s going to take is a concerted, grassroots effort to reach these voters, listen to them and bring them along on a journey to help them understand it’s OK for them to let concern for the common good, and not allegiance to a political party, determine how they vote. We need to tell them that what Democrats are pushing for lines up with the values evangelicals hold dear — making the world better and bringing people together. Those policies include commonsense gun reform to keep kids safe, engaging solutions at the border and lowering the cost of child care. Many Christians are heartbroken at the idea that they have to choose between a faith that’s meaningful to them and a political identity that has been wedded to it. They don’t know what to do, and we need to help them separate those two identities.
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More at the link above.