Yesterday, the USCCB offered two press releases on the announcement. The first was a cautious one, saying in essence “we appreciate the first step, but we need time to look at the details.” The second and longer statement was much more blunt and disdainful. For instance, with regard to the changes announced yesterday, they say this (emphasis in the original):

. . . in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer’s plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer.

IOW, our original objection still stands, say the bishops. Indeed, they are also pushing to expand the battle, noting other objections not addressed by yesterday’s changes. They want anyone — insurers, secular businesses, and individuals — to be able to exempt themselves from paying for contraception. They cloak their arguments in religious liberty, but the issue is power and control.

The first amendment’s protection of religious liberty is not a license for religious organizations or individuals to disregard any law or regulation they don’t like. For example . . . 

If a church wants to build an extension on their building for a new sanctuary, they have to abide by city zoning ordinances. They can’t just say “Freedom of Religion!” and build wherever they want. Similarly, they have to get building permits. They can’t shout “First Amendment” and start digging a foundation and putting up walls, stringing electrical wire, and running the pipes for the plumbing. They can’t tell their janitors “sorry, but the first amendment means we don’t have to pay unemployment insurance for you.” Churches that run soup kitchen operations have to deal with health inspectors. And, as a police officer so kindly pointed out to me a while back, clergy are not given a religious liberty exemption that allows them to run a red light simply because they are going to make a hospital visit.

Religious hospitals have to abide by NIH guidelines for research, state and federal laws on handling controlled substances, and thousands of other laws and regulations. They are obligated to accept all patients in need of emergency care, and if a drag queen shows up with his lover alongside, both bleeding profusely after having been beaten, the hospital can’t say “Sorry, but our church disapproves of homosexuality and the first amendment says we can show you to the curb.”

Laurie Goodstein at the NY Times, writing before the compromise was announced, noted that while Catholics were making the religious freedom argument about their hospitals and universities, other mainstream religious groups were fine with covering contraception:

The public policy arm of the United Methodist Church, which like the Catholic Church, runs hospitals and universities across the country, has applauded the mandate to cover contraception. And a coalition of mainline Protestants, Muslims and Reform and Conservative Jews released a declaration on Wednesday supporting the ruling.

The Rev. Debra W. Haffner, executive director of the Religious Institute, a liberal interfaith group that works on sexuality issues and that wrote the declaration, said, “The mainstream religious voice has supported contraception for decades, at least for the last 40 years.”

But the White House didn’t try to make the case that religious freedom has its limits. They simply bought into the USCCB’s framing of the issue. Indeed, the Washington Post’s story about yesterday’s announcement says

The announcement caps a frenetic month in which the administration often sent mixed signals and appeared caught off guard by the political fallout as even allies questioned its handling of the issue.

Sorry, but anyone who says they were “caught off guard” by this is either (a) an idiot or (b) asleep.

In 2004, various bishops spoke against giving communion to John Kerry over his abortion views and voting record. During the 2008 election, the conservative Catholic bishops were up in arms about people voting for Obama because of their perception that he would open the floodgates to abortion. As John Allen wrote at NCR shortly after Obama’s election and the Nov 2008 meeting of the USCCB:

America’s Catholic bishops have been talking about abortion and politics at least since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but their discussion this week in Baltimore had a special sense of urgency – driven by what many bishops and their pro-life advisors regard as a looming nightmare scenario under the new Obama administration in the “Freedom of Choice Act,” or FOCA.

Candidate Obama pledged to support the Freedom of Choice Act, which was first introduced in congress in 2004 but to date has not made it out of the committee stage. It acknowledges a “fundamental right” to abortion during the first trimester of pregnancy and at subsequent stages for health reasons. It would also bar discrimination in the exercise of the right “in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services or information.”

Fast forward from 2008 to the health care debates. What was the last big sticking issue? Abortion. Who was in the middle of that fight at the very end? The USCCB. They leaned on Stupak HARD to get what they wanted, and were quite angry when he (from their perspective) caved on getting Hyde into law and settled for an executive order. It’s an ugly story.

The bishops are not stupid, nor asleep. They are, in fact, eminently predictable. Why it is news that the bishops were prepared for this fight is beyond me.

And why anyone thinks that yesterday’s compromise would solve anything is similarly beyond me.

__________

photo h/t to William F. Yurasko

John the Baptist window in Glasgow Cathedral (photo: Glasgow Amateur/flickr)

Influential evangelical leader James Dobson set off the fireworks at this weekend’s Christian Right summit, giving a speech that lavished praise on Karen Santorum and asked whether Americans really wanted Callista Gingrich — “a woman who was a man’s mistress for eight years” — as their First Lady, according to sources who attended the meeting.

Sources told Business Insider that Dobson’s speech was a “startling moment” that left many in the audience — particularly those who support Gingrich — floored. One source described Dobson’s tone as “angry,” and said it seemed like Dobson was blaming Callista Gingrich for the couples’ affair, which began while the former House Speaker was still married to his second wife (this is Callista Gingrich’s first marriage).

“It was clear that, to him, the villian in this story is Callista Gingrich,” the source said. “And he was announcing it to 170 ministers with huge mailing lists and television ministries.”

That’s gotta sting. What no one seems to remember — not Wyler or anyone else — is that five years ago, when Gingrich was looking to reenter the political fights but knew he needed to address the adultery issue, it was to James Dobson that Gingrich turned. Gingrich and Dobson had a memorable radio conversation in which Newt admitted his adultery publicly for the first time (you can listen to the audio at the link). Folks like the late Jerry Falwell clamored to commend Gingrich for his confession:

“He has admitted his moral shortcomings to me, as well, in private conversations,” Falwell wrote in a weekly newsletter sent Friday to members of the Moral Majority Coalition and The Liberty Alliance. “And he has also told me that he has, in recent years, come to grips with his personal failures and sought God’s forgiveness.”

CNN’s Bill Schneider speculated at the time that this was a signal from Gingrich that he wanted in the presidential race and wanted the whole adultery question neutralized. In contrast to Rudy Giuliani’s interview with Larry King admitting his own rather substantive marital problems, Gingrich went to a major — perhaps the major — figure in the TheoCon movement, looking for absolution and a blessing. [cont'd.]

And he got it.

But three weeks after that radio broadcast, Dobson made an unsolicited phone call to author and blogger Dan Gilgoff (then at US News), adding another layer to the conversation with Gingrich:

Focus on the Family founder James Dobson appeared to throw cold water on a possible presidential bid by former Sen. Fred Thompson while praising former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is also weighing a presidential run, in a phone interview Tuesday.

“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.

At the time, Fred Thompson was the up-and-coming flavor of the month. Very Serious People asked questions like “Will he get in the race or won’t he? Can he save the GOP from the likes of Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain?” A couple of days later, Dobson’s spokesperson tried to backpedal a bit on the Gilgoff interview, saying

[Dobson's] words weren’t intended to represent either an endorsement of former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich or a disparagement of former Sen. Fred Thompson. Dr. Dobson appreciates Sen. Thompson’s solid, pro-family voting record and his position that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

In his conversation with Mr. Gilgoff, Dr. Dobson was attempting to highlight that to the best of his knowledge, Sen. Thompson hadn’t clearly communicated his religious faith, and many evangelical Christians might find this a barrier to supporting him.

Still, the implications were clear. For whatever reason, Dobson was clearly more comfortable supporting Newt Gingrich, a repentant serial adulterer, than Fred Thompson.

That was then, but my how things have changed.

Today, it seems as if Dobson is repenting a bit for his 2007 comments about Gingrich. In that Business Insider piece that I linked to at the top, Wyler goes on to describe a division among the participants:

In the wake of the conference, Christian Right leaders have publicly split into two camps — a bad sign for a coalition whose strength has always come from its solidarity. In one camp, powerful evangelical scions like Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Family Research Council President Tony Perkins; and Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, have thrown their support behind Santorum. On the other hand, influential California megachurch pastor Jim Garlow, evangelical activist David Lane, and Christian marketing guru George Barna have teamed up to support Gingrich.

So what’s changed?

(a) Not much. In 2007, Dobson used Gingrich as a way to undercut Fred Thompson, hoping to energize the TheoCon community to get behind someone more religiously acceptable. He wasn’t praising Gingrich as much as slipping a knife into Thompson, to try to build up support for a candidate the TheoCons could really get behind. Not necessarily Gingrich in 2008, mind you, but perhaps someone like Mike Huckabee or Sam Brownback. In 2012, Dobson’s found a more acceptable candidate, and is quite willing to use Gingrich again, this time to derail Mitt Romney’s campaign.

(b) Everything. In 2007, Dobson allowed Gingrich to use Dobson’s radio show as a means to reenter politics, proclaiming himself to be a reformed, repentant, and renewed Christian. Those are words to warm every TheoCon’s heart. But in the five years since then, what has Gingrich done to show his faith credentials? What has he done to promote the TheoCon cause? He’s done lots of lobbying and consulting, promoting the bank account of Newt and Callista Gingrich, but nothing to get the TheoCons cheering. Neither Dobson nor Gingrich has said much publicly about the other since then (until recently, that is), but there is one little public thing that might be in play. In 2009, Gingrich left the Baptist church and became a Roman Catholic — not something that went down well with many TheoCons. If this was part of Dobson’s problem with Gingrich, it’s not as simple as saying “TheoCons don’t like Catholics.” After all, Dobson recently endorsed the very Roman Catholic Rick Santorum. Instead, it may be that Dobson sees Gingrich’s conversion to Catholicism as yet another sign that Gingrich views religion as a political tool to be used to manipulate others, not as a way of life for one’s self, and yet another indication that the 2007 interview was more calculated than sincere. In other words, Dobson now sees that he got played in 2007, and doesn’t like that one bit.

(c) Both of the above. Dobson used Gingrich in 2007 to torpedo Thompson, and wants to do the same now to torpedo Mitt Romney. If Dobson thinks he was played by Gingrich in 2007, that would certainly explain the anger with which Dobson spoke out against Newt and Callista last week. Being able to pay Gingrich back for being fooled by him in 2007 while at the same time trying to boost a “real Christian conservative” like Santorum as the alternative to Romney is icing on the cake.

It’s mostly a wild guess, but put me down for (c).

_______

photo of a portion of the John the Baptist window in Glasgow Cathedral h/t to Glasgow Amateur

Not since 1972 has generation played such a significant role in voter preferences as it has in recent elections. Younger people have voted substantially more Democratic in each election since 2004, while older voters have cast more ballots for Republican candidates in each election since 2006. A new Pew Research Center study suggests this pattern may well continue in 2012. Millennial voters are inclined to back President Barack Obama by a wide margin in a potential matchup against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, while Silent generation voters are solidly behind Romney. Baby Boomers and Generation X voters, who are the most anxious about the uncertain economic times, are on the fence about a second term for Obama.

This new strong Democratic preference among young voters is why in the past few years we have seen state Republican parties make very aggressive pushes for more restrictive voting rules in the name of stopping “voter fraud.” In the past two years the GOP has passed new laws in Wisconsin, Maine, Kansas, and Florida that will make it harder for young adults to vote. The GOP has also tried but failed to pass similar laws in several other states. The laws often impede young college age adults who tend to move much more often so they don’t always have a current state-based IDs and need to re-register often. Back in the 90′s having election laws that made it marginally easier for young college age people to register and vote had only a relatively small impact on elections, but with this huge partisan age gap any real increase or decrease in youth turnout can have a significant impact.

Here’s the lovely video to remember it by:

Well in the name of such dangerous First Amendment practitioners, the law enforcement of the Twin Cities of Minnesota and the Secret Service has to pay out a six-figure settlement.

The settlement includes $100,000 in compensation paid by the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the Secret Service. The settlement also includes an agreement by the St. Paul police department to implement a training program aimed at educating officers regarding the First Amendment rights of the press and public with respect to police operations, including proper procedures for dealing with the press covering demonstrations.

Meanwhile the Tea Partiers when not being feted by the cable networks are still demanding justice, or at least a sandwich for Kenny Gladney.

Purity means different things to different people

It occurs to me that in fact the self-styled sensible types are not arguing against “purity” but the progressives’ right to exist, much less speak out. When somebody condemns Obama’s jones to rob Medicare and Social Security so he can please the rich corporate interests whose 2012 cash he craves, the Sensible Ones immediately start singing the Purity Troll Chorus. When somebody (a somebody who likely spent much of 2007 and 2008 phonebanking for Obama) asks why people like Dan Choi are put on trial for allegedly desecrating the White House grounds with their presence yet drunken frat boys are allowed to puke on, pee on, and swing from White House trees, the Sensible Ones retort with “So are you voting for Perry or Bachmann?”

The Sensible Centrists, not the progressives, are the ones who truly cannot tolerate any deviation from what they consider the norm, which as practiced by the controlling corporate-based wing of the Democrats is the slow strangulation of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and pretty much everything else good that came of the New Deal and the Great Society. Torture and rendition and murder are apparently just fine when done under the watch of a Democrat, and even calls to prosecute such acts done under the aegis of a Republican administration are swept aside with calls to “look forward, not backward”; the whistleblowers, not the wrongdoers, are the ones prosecuted, just as persons exercising their First Amendment rights get arrested and put on trial.

Oh, well.

With high unemployment, millions of mortgages still underwater, the level of uninsured up despite the passage of a health care law, yet Wall Street flush with cash as a result of a string of bailouts, it is hard to convince regular people the federal government is working for them.

The increasingly negative impression of the federal government should be concerning for the Obama campaign on multiple levels. First, as the head of the federal government, fairly or unfairly, people will blame the President for it not working. Second, the belief that the government is incapable of working only helps re-enforce the Republican party’s small government narrative. And finally, Obama’s 2008 campaign was about changing the way Washington worked, people either don’t think he has changed it or don’t think his changes have been for the better.

pic via jessica mullen at flickr.com

As you may have noticed Firedoglake is having a membership drive.

I mention this because earlier this month I received an email from Michelle Obama mentioning it was her husband’s birthday (50th) on August 4th.

Today I received an email from Cindy McCain stating that Monday, August 29th is her husband’s birthday (MMXIVth).

What could honor both of them more, than to join an entity they both “appreciate” so very much? It’s a lot better argument for funding than what the Department of Defense has come up with now. And you can get a T-Shirt.

And you’ll have more friends than Glenn Beck has attendees.

Candide

I’ve found one of the saddest yet most common defenses of President Obama’s handling of his job to be the weird argument that it simply wasn’t possible for him to do a better job, or to do anything different from what he did. It always reminds me of the mantra of the misguided extreme optimist Dr. Pangloss in Candide, “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Ezra Klein is up with another post defending Obama with this same basic argument:

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about ways in which the past few years could have gone differently. I’ve even come up with a few. But none of them lead to dramatically better outcomes today.

I can come up with scenarios in which President Obama accomplished somewhat less — perhaps by scaling back the health-care plan — and lost fewer seats in the midterm election. I can come up with scenarios in which the White House accomplished marginally more — perhaps by using the reconciliation process for an energy bill — but paid a greater political cost. I can come up with scenarios in which the stimulus was slightly more visible — perhaps it could have wiped out the payroll tax entirely — or slightly larger or included a long-term deficit reduction component.

But I’ve never been able to come up with a realistic scenario in which a lot more got done, the economy is in much better shape, and the president is dramatically more popular today. Anything that even comes close is really a counterfactual of what the chairman of the Federal Reserve could have done, and I’m not confident that I understand Bernanke’s constraints nor that a more massive intervention on the part of the Fed would have been the cure-all some suggest.

This is truly a sad lack of imagination. The possibilities of what Obama could have done differently are endless.

Even with the constraints of Congress, Obama could have behaved radically different. I can’t be confident of the outcome, but Obama didn’t need health care reform right away, wasting a year on hopeless bipartisan compromise.  [cont'd.] Instead, he could have gone after the Recovery Act, remained focused on housing relief, debt relief, and promoted more jobs legislation. Obama had a lot of political capital at the time and significant majorities in Congress. He could likely have passed many small follow up stimulative laws in 2009. Instead, he pivoted away from the economic crisis because he wrongly ignored those who warned the crisis was going to get worse.

Even if you believe Senate Republicans would have used the filibuster to stop every attempt at more stimulus, Obama could have used reconciliation to pass more stimulus measures with only 50 votes in the Senate. One example: is I wanted health care reform to have the Medicaid expansion start right away. If done right, that could have been an extra $50 billion of stimulus in 2010.

Most importantly though, Obama has not even fully used the power he has to take action without Congress. To begin with, he could have done something smart with the $30 billion for HAMP instead of allowing his administration to turn the program into a disaster. He could have used the Conservatorship of Fannie and Freddie to push for “own to rent” or aggressive mortgage modification. Similarly, Obama could have recess-appointed someone besides Ben Bernanke to head the Federal Reserve and recess-appointed two other progressives to the empty seats on the board.

I can easily see many plausible ways Obama could have directly or indirectly gotten another few hundred billion of stimulus injected into the economy in 2009 and 2010.

The President of the United States is not all powerful, but a President whose party fully controls Congress with big majorities has power. To act like the President simply couldn’t have taken a different path that would have produced a very different outcome is silly. Let’s not act like the destiny of the most powerful man in Washington is practically pre-ordained.

Obama's support in 2008

The level of Democratic enthusiasm for voting for President Obama again has dropped noticeably in PPP’s recent polling. From Tom Jensen:

Only 48% of Democrats on our most recent national survey said they were ‘very excited’ about voting in 2012. On the survey before that the figure was 49%. Those last two polls are the only times all year the ‘very excited’ number has dipped below 50%.

In 13 polls before August the average level of Democrats ‘very excited’ about voting next year had averaged 57%. It had been as high as 65% and only twice had the number even dipped below 55%.

It had seemed earlier in the year like Democrats had overcome the ‘enthusiasm gap’ that caused so much of their trouble in last year’s elections. But now 54% of Republicans say they’re ‘very excited’ about casting their ballots next year, indicating that the problem may be back.

These people who were formerly “very excited” to vote for Obama will probably show up at the polls on election day and vote for Obama. The problem is that they aren’t likely to volunteer for the campaign.

The 2008 Obama campaign benefited from millions of manhours of free volunteer labor. And beyond official volunteering, being very excited about a candidate also makes people more likely to defend them in casual conversation and prod family and friends to vote. If this 10 point drop in excitement translates into, say, a 30 percent reduction in volunteer hours, that is serious blow to the campaign.

a sistine ceiling (photo: archer10)

As Obama signals that he’s open to cuts in Social Security and Medicare in his negotiations with the hostage-takers of the GOP to raise the debt limit, Obama now appears to accept the odd notion that the debt is the biggest threat to the economy, rather than the jobs crisis driven by . . .  well, let’s let Bill McBride of Calculated Risk lay it out:

The main reason employment growth is sluggish is because the U.S. is recovering from a housing and credit bubble, and the subsequent financial crisis. There is still too much excess capacity in most of the economy for a large contribution from new investment (except in equipment and software). We see this excess capacity in housing, and in overall industrial production. There is also excess capacity in office space, retail space, and other categories of commercial real estate. In addition, household debt, as a percent of income, remains very high and household deleveraging is ongoing. That is why so many companies identify their number one problem as “lack of customers”.

Until the excess capacity is absorbed, and household balance sheets are back in order, the recovery will remain sluggish. . . .

But it is very disappointing to hear politicians incorrectly identify the reasons for the sluggish employment growth. From President Obama today: [internal quote omitted here]

I know there are policymakers [like Obama] who think the problem is confidence and deficits. But this is incorrect. Misdiagnosing the causes of weak employment growth will lead to the wrong policies. Oh well … this reminds me of 2005 when I couldn’t get any policymakers to pay attention to the housing bubble. Frustrating.

Click through to read the whole thing, and count Scarecrow among those who share CR’s opinion. Me, too — and I’d say that “frustrating” is an understatement.

But if Obama does make his grand bargain with the GOP, not only will it perpetuate this misdiagnosis and strengthen the wrong policies, it will also endanger his own re-election.

I hope that sentence gets the attention of the WH and Team Obama. They have no fear, apparently, of putting “getting a deal” ahead of “crafting the right policies”. When other people pay the price for such deals, like the health insurance bill’s attack on women seeking to exercise their right to make reproductive choices, Team Obama calls it “shared sacrifice.” But maybe, just maybe, if pursuing these wrong policies endangers their own jobs and not just those of people outside the Beltway, perhaps they will rethink the whole “let’s give in to the hostage takers again” philosophy of governing.

One aspect of the 2012 election calculus that I don’t think Team Obama realizes is that a deal like this will throw away any hope he has of holding onto the Catholic voters that supported him in 2008. Right after the election, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life did a poll that examined how religious affiliation and practice played a role in the choice between McCain and Obama. One very interesting nugget appeared when Pew looked back at the 2000 and 2004 elections and compared Obama’s 2008 ability to reach out to different religious groups with the results of Gore and Kerry. Generally speaking, Obama did better than Gore or Kerry across the board — Obama won the election, after all. But the two groups where Obama showed the most improvement over Kerry were in reaching “unaffiliated” voters (+8%) and Roman Catholics (+7%). The latter came despite significant opposition to his candidacy from more than a few outspoken Catholic bishops, who warned of increased abortions should Obama be elected.

According to Pew, Catholics represented 27% of the voters nationwide. But as this map from Adherents.com shows, that representation is not equally spread around. In states like Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York, Catholics are between 30 and 50% of the population. In Missouri, Ohio, and Florida, they are between 25 and 30%. (The map is a bit out of date, but the general trend is still accurate.)

Let us pause to consider the electoral importance of those seven states . . .

Catholic laypeople, largely speaking, do not follow the bishops in lockstep when it comes to matters of sexuality or in voting. As Pew noted in a later report on the 2008 election, white Catholics who attend mass every week voted more Republican, while Hispanic and minority Catholics, and those who attend mass less regularly voted more for Obama. Just as there are non-trivial numbers of Catholics get abortions, have sex outside of marriage, and get divorced and remarried — just like non-Catholics — there are Catholics who are quite willing to support candidates whom the bishops often reject over abortion. Their approach to their voting choice is that “There’s more to the Catholic faith than the issue of abortion.”

Caring for the poor and needy comes to mind, for example.

Somewhat amazingly, the USCCB is on record against the intransigence of the GOP when it comes to putting the burdens of deficit reduction solely on the backs of the elderly, the poor, and the immigrants. While the bishops will never like Obama’s health care bill and other abortion-related policies, he has them on his side when it came to the budget. (Well, except of NY’s Archbishop Dolan.)

Back on April 13th, two prominent Roman Catholic bishops wrote to every member of Congress regarding the budget discussions [pdf]: Howard Hubbard, Chair, US Bishops Committee on International Justice and Peace and Stephen Blaire, Chair, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. From their letter, and the three criteria by which they offer to “guide difficult budgetary decisions,” the priorities they outline on behalf of the USCCB seem wildly different from those espoused by the GOP:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

This language is being used across the country by Catholic bishops, in comments not only on the federal budget but especially on state budgets. For example, in Minnesota, the Catholic bishops joined with their Lutheran counterparts to make a joint statement about the budget insanity:

We expect that, as you seek to balance the budget, you will engage in civil and respectful dialogue rather than partisanship and posturing. We trust that you will seek to govern the people of the state of Minnesota so that all citizens — particularly those who are poor and live on the margins of our communities — have access to housing, education, health care and other human services. We suggest that the most effective means of eliminating poverty resides in policies that lift people out of a safety net to a level of sustainability.

Minnesota has a history of caring for all its citizens, and all of us are heirs of those who shaped that legacy.

Catholics and Lutherans — representing some two million Minnesotans — have partnered in that legacy as the largest providers of health care, human services and non-public education. Being a state that cares for its people has been the hallmark of Minnesota.

And the most telling measure of how well we care for each other is to consider how we treat those who are most vulnerable among us.

These “Minnesota Nice” are the kind of voters (Catholic and otherwise) who got behind Obama in 2008. If he caves to the GOP on the debt ceiling negotiations and sacrifices Social Security and Medicare to protect the tax gimmicks so beloved by the MOTUs and banksters, these voters will not be happy. Nor will their counterparts in Wisconsin, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Missouri, Ohio, and Florida.

Let us pause to let the significance of those states sink in once again.

It’s not just Catholics — a wide-ranging coalition of religious groups has come together around these same principles. (Full statement and list of major signatories here – pdf.) These aren’t hippies that Team Obama can punch, hoping to get an electoral bounce from the folks who hate hippies. These are the folks who volunteer in soup kitchens, raise houses with Habitat for Humanity, and do all the grunt work of many charities, large and small.

The spines of Senate Democrats and House Democrats alike have been stiffening since Obama sent his signal on Thursday about being open to cuts in Social Security and Medicare. Perhaps this is because the folks who are concerned about “the least of these” have been getting through to their elected members of Congress.

If only we could get through at the White House.

Whether they realize it or not, their job security may depend on whether they hear that message.