The Evangelicals, and remember there are probably at least 50 million people here in the U.S. that self idenitfy as Evangelicals, will be up for grabs.  They are reachable on social justice issues, on the environment, and on economic issues.  An Obama win will likely result in a permanent defeat of religious conservatives' efforts to legislate their agenda--they will continue to oppose abortion and gay marriage but recognize that they cannot change the law--they will frown on abortion just as they do adultery with the same effect on the law .....The non conservative religious folks will be completely open to voting on Democratics issues.

The next time someone tells you that they don't see any problem with government funding of church-based programs (or vouchers for religious schools)ask them if that applies to Scientology, Wicca or programs run by churches like Wright's Trinity UCC. I have yet to find anyone who says that would be fine with them. Most usually say that the government should choose which churches are "qualified". When I ask if they are saying that the government should be the one deciding which religions are legitimate and point out that this would require amending the Bill of Rights, they are stymied. No one has ever told me that they would be OK with this. In fact one friend of my thirty-year old son recently told me that he never forgot me pointing this out to him when he was in college and that the more he thought about it the more he became a strong advocate of keeping goverment money out of religion.

And this garbage about not being allowed to proselytize or discriminate in hiring! The more these programs spread the more impossible enforcing these rules will be.

Liberals and the media are just twiddling the thumbs as these dangerous practices are being sold to a gullible public by the right. By the time they wake up it will be extremely hard to undo the damage. Just look how far the religious right got with their anti-evolution propaganda before scientists, the liberals and the media woke up a started to kind of fight back. It took years for them just to begin to point out that in science the word "theory" does not mean specualtion, hypothesis, but an principle with extremely strong evidence supporting it. The same has happened with the right's campaign to get the public to accept the idea that an embryo is a human person, not just a biological entity with the potential to become one, comparable to a seed or fertilized egg. (Ever hear anyone say they ate a three-chicken omelette for breakfast or crushed an oak tree after stepping on an acorn?) They have also succeeded in convincing a sizble minority that many kinds of birth control cause abortions and getting pharmacists and hospitals to refuse to give them to women. Why else would McCain have hemmed and hawed when asked to comment on the fairness of insurance paying for Viagra but not birth control? He knows he would infuriate his base. (Too bad Obama doesn't care about infuriating his.)

And I've no doubt that Warren is anti-Choice and anti-gay.  The question is whether he's willing to support someone who doesn't believe those things, or at least to withhold his support from someone who does because of other factors.

If I read your comment correctly, are you suggesting that not only must Democrats be pro-choice and pro-rights but they must categorically and explicitly reject votes from people who aren't not withstanding that those people may otherwise prefer the Democratic platform?

I understand the "if you lie down with dogs you get fleas" philosophy.  It's true that if a Democratic majority relies too heavily on anti-choice voters that its choice message may get somewhat blunted.  When someone can convince me (or someone sensible can even claim with a straight face) that there's a solid pro-choice, pro-gay rights, liberal majority in this country that will be the time to start considering moral purity tests to see whose votes we'll deign to accept.

I'm talking real salt of the earth:)

I'd like to invite McCain and Obama to a town hall meeting in the grandstand at Belmont Park.  I'll make it worth their while, I'll give em' my lock of the card free of charge:)  Lets see 'em pander there....