White Christian America versus Everybody Else

By Sara Robinson

September 4th, 2008 - 1:46pm ET

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In the current issue of The Nation (which also featured a cover story co-authored by our own Bob Borosage), Chris Bowers pointed out a structural truth that lies at the heart of both American political parties. In the Age of Reagan, it came to pass that the GOP consolidated itself as the party of people who are white and Christian. Everybody else—black, brown, women, gays, immigrants, urban dwellers, non-Christians, you name it— found themselves on the receiving end of conservative scapegoating so often that they eventually decamped and aggregated in the other party. At this point, it's statistically true that If you are either not white or not Christian, then you are (with varying degrees of certainty, depending on what you identify as) far more likely to be a Democrat.

This has left us in an interesting situation where the vast bulk of the country's swing voters are white Christians with progressive tendencies, who can be induced to vote either way depending on what values you can activate in them. This gives them political power far beyond their actual numbers, because winning a presidential election is largely reduced to being able to find and work the political, cultural, and religious sweet spots of this one group.