Smoked

The news is beginning to sink in that Obama has not managed to change the voting preferences of the most religious white voters, evangelicals especially.To explain why Obama's "much vaunted religious outreach campaign...isn't working," pastordan has recourse to the idea that it's just very difficult to move socially conservative evangelicals. I agree with that, but it's also worth entertaining the possibility that "much vaunted" is not the same as "out there and effective." Go past the jump in Michelle Boorstein's WaPo story about politicking on Christian music stations and you see that the Obama folks have been well behind the McCain folks in that venue. And from what I can gather on my own, outside the orbit of religious progressives, the Obama religious ground game with white Christians has, going back to the primaries, just not been that good. Yes, it's hard to move values voters. But it's harder if you're relying mostly on smoke and mirrors.