God and Hillary Clinton (25 page)

She then concluded with a clarion call, to rally the audience, to rouse her pro-choice allies into moving ahead with her in their shared crusade:

She then finished with a flurry, shouting at the NARAL audience: “Our rights are at stake. Our freedom is at stake. Our way of life is at stake. Let's wake up America!”

It was evident from this speech that no other issue so animated Mrs. Clinton. In none of her speeches on religion was she ever as zealous as in this one on abortion. Moreover, it would not be unfair to conclude from the text and tone of this speech that Mrs. Clinton seems to literally hate pro-lifers. In a separate context, she has confessed: “I wrestle nearly every day with the biblical admonition to forgive and love my enemies.”
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Yet with speeches such as this, it would seem to be a particularly acute challenge in the case of pro-lifers.

Finally, it must be noted that this speech on social policy by Mrs. Clinton contained no mention of God, Christ, or her faith, a common occurrence for Hillary, who has long been very deliberate in separating her faith from her position on abortion. As such, abortion is the one and only area where she insists that her faith does not influence her policy positions.

A few weeks later, Mrs. Clinton backed up her words with action. On March 25, 2004, she voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. The bill would have allowed federal prosecutors to bring charges on behalf of a “child in utero” as a second victim when injured or killed during commission of a violent act against the mother. The
bill was passed sixty-one to thirty-eight. All but two Republicans favored it, while most Democrats (thirty-five of forty-eight) opposed it, including Mrs. Clinton, as did one independent.

March for Women's Lives

In April 2004, Hillary took her NARAL speech a step further when she agreed to speak at the “March for Women's Lives” on the mall in Washington, D.C. Helping to kick off the event on April 23, which was highlighted by a Sunday, April 25, finale, was John F. Kerry, the Democratic Party's nominee for president in 2004. Kerry's opponent in November was not welcome at this event: Among the estimated half-million marchers—the National Organization for Women claimed the figure was 1.15 million
²⁹
—were women carrying signs decrying “Bush's War on Women,” and also condemning the president's mother, Barbara Bush, for not aborting her oldest son: “If Only Barbara Bush Had Choice,” read one sign; “Barbara Chose Poorly,” said another. Another prominent pro-lifer, Pope John Paul II, would not have received many votes at this rally either: “The Pope's Mother Had No Choice,” lamented another sign.
³⁰
A popular target at this rally was Christianity generally, and pro-life Christians in particular. Read one placard: “Pro-Life Is to Christianity as Al-Qaeda Is to Islam.”

This is not to say that there were no religious speakers or religious imagery at the event. Planned Parenthood sent its official chaplain. Also in attendance were the Christian Dykes for Choice, the Religious Coalition for Reproduction Choice, and Catholics for a Free Choice, the last of which was represented by Francis Kissling, who described the gathering on the mall as a “sacred place…the place to be, not the churches.” Likewise, the Reverend Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State described it as “hallowed space.” Amid placards with statements like, “This Is What a Jewish Feminist
Looks Like” and “Episcopalians for Choice” and “I Asked God, She's Pro-Choice,” were chants such as “Tax the Church! Tax the Church!”

There was actually a notable degree of religious talk at the event. One of the featured speakers, Representative Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), shouted from the podium that George W. Bush needed to “go to hell.” This was not an isolated thought that weekend, as one of those who followed Waters fumed against the “Bush/Satan administration,” which must have been a corrective to the congresswoman, implying that either Bush had already been to hell or that Satan had come up—either way, an alliance reportedly had been agreed upon. Another speaker felt that the “religious right” was an inaccurate term for a movement that instead, she averred, ought to be called the “religious reich.” A female rabbi said that to be “pro-choice” was to be “pro-God.” The infamous abortion doctor George Tiller—whom pro-lifers call “Tiller the Killer”—was even in a preaching mood; invoking the Book of Revelation, he referred to the unholy alliance of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft as “the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

It was into this zoo that Mrs. Clinton stepped (as did former Clinton secretary of state Madeleine Albright). It was a Sunday morning, but the crowd was unlike anything attending a Billy Graham crusade. As Mrs. Clinton took the stage, said a reporter from
The Nation
, “it was as if the Beatles arrived.” Young ladies cheered and screamed.
³¹

Hillary told the crowd that the last time abortion rights advocates rallied in Washington, in 1992, the country had elected her husband as president, and abortion had been saved. Thus, she said, for twelve years there had been no reason to march, because there was a president and an administration, she said, “that respected the rights of women.”
³²

Those abortion rights were now under assault by the Bush administration, a fact that enraged the speaker and the crowd. Here again, as in her NARAL speech four months earlier, Hillary's tone was one of vituperation. She said the Bush administration was filled with
people who “disparage sexual harassment laws,” who believe that the “pay gap” between men and women is a farce, and who believe (she was correct here) that
Roe v. Wade
represents “the worst abomination of constitutional law.”
³³

Clinton urged the ladies to vote the Democratic Party line in November. The entire event, reported one source, was “a pep rally for Democrats.”
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Mrs. Clinton said that the March for Women's Lives would be in vain if the women did not show up at the polls in the fall. She urged the crowd to elect a pro-choice president.
³⁵
When she finished, the emcee prophesied, “Thank you,
President
Clinton.” The crowd exploded.
³⁶

Again in a place where religion seemed to hold something of a dubious reputation, Hillary steered clear of the subject altogether. Despite her respect for the Christian faith, she remained silent amid the sea of rather uncharitable signs and slogans that seemed to misuse or even abuse religious imagery and individuals.

Values Voters in 2004

With its heavy rhetoric and rallying images, Hillary's speech at the March for Women's Lives created a marked contrast with her tone in the aftermath of the November elections. On November 2, 2004, George W. Bush handily won reelection over the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, winning more than 50 percent of the popular vote, a milestone Bill Clinton never reached. He did it with a big boost from churchgoing Christians, the so-called values voters who were crucial to his victory. Indeed, the 2004 vote was a wake-up call and potential watershed for a religious Democrat like Mrs. Clinton.

A telling difference between Kerry and Bush, which was crucial to these values voters, was how their faith related to their positions on abortion. Bush said that a life in the womb is a gift from God that should be protected, and his actions in office backed up this position
as he sought to overturn Bill Clinton's policies from the 1990s. Kerry's position was more complicated. In the final presidential debate on October 13, 2004, he said, “My faith affects everything I do, in truth…. And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people.” He explained that this credo explains “why I fight against poverty,” “why I fight to clean up the environment,” and “why I fight for equality and justice,” all of which he as a legislator transfers in an official way to other people. However, like Hillary, the only area where Kerry seemed not to allow his faith to influence his public life was abortion.

As president, John F. Kerry would have changed the direction that Bush had been heading in, pledging to fill any openings in the U.S. Supreme Court with pro-choice appointments. Like Mrs. Clinton, he was one of the most inflexibly pro-choice members of the Senate, and a popular speaker at events like NARAL gatherings and the March for Women's Lives. At the 2003 NARAL Pro-Choice America Dinner, where, in language much like Senator Clinton's, he described pro-lifers as “the forces of intolerance,” Kerry boasted that his maiden speech as a freshman senator had been in support of
Roe v. Wade
. On the Senate floor, he stated: “The right thing to do is to treat abortions as exactly what they are—a medical procedure that any doctor is free to provide and any pregnant woman free to obtain. Consequently, abortions should not have to be performed in tightly guarded clinics on the edge of town; they should be performed and obtained in the same locations as any other medical procedure…. [A]bortions need to be moved out of the fringes of medicine and into the mainstream of medical practice.”
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In April 2004, Kerry took a rare timeout from the presidential campaign to appear on the Senate floor to join Mrs. Clinton in voting against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act that would make it a crime to harm a fetus during an assault on the mother. He also joined Senator Clinton in voting against the ban on partial-birth abortion.

These pronounced differences between John Kerry and George W. Bush on abortion mattered significantly in November 2004, as Mrs. Clinton soon learned: According to CNN exit polling data, 22 percent of the electorate, or 25.3 million voters, said that “moral values” was their most important issue—79 percent of them cast ballots for Bush.
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Over a quarter of all voters, 26 percent, said that abortion ought to be “mostly illegal,” and they went for Bush by 72 percent to 27 percent, or by 21.5 million votes to 8.1 million votes. Those 15 percent who said abortion should be “always illegal” cast a ballot for Bush by 77 percent to 22 percent, or 13.3 million to 3.8 million, a Bush advantage of nearly 10 million votes. This surge of pro-lifers was motivated and mobilized by Kerry's stridency on the abortion issue in a way unseen since the
Roe v. Wade
decision was handed down.

Equally interesting, and related, were the election figures based on church attendance: According to the same CNN exit poll data, those who attend church more than once per week made up 16 percent of 2004 voters, or 18.4 million voters, and they went for Bush by 63 percent to 35 percent, or by 11.6 million to 6.4 million, a difference of 5.2 million votes. On the other hand, being perceived as a secular or even unreligious candidate had some political traction in November 2004: Those who said they never attend church, which equaled 15 percent of voters, or 17.3 million voters, went for Kerry by 64 percent to 34 percent, or by 11.1 million to 5.9 million, also a difference of 5.2 million votes. These numbers were similar to the 2000 vote, when those who attended church more than weekly went for Bush by 63 percent to 36 percent, whereas Vice President Al Gore won those who never attended by 61 percent to 32 percent.

Ten percent of those who voted on November 2 claimed no religion at all. They made up nearly 15 million voters. Of those, 68 percent, or 10.2 million, voted for Kerry, but only 30 percent, or 4.5 million, voted for Bush—a Kerry advantage of 5.7 million votes. In other words, those religious voters often credited for winning the day for
George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential contest were countered by nonreligious Americans who tried to win the day for John F. Kerry.

The non-churchgoing vote was even larger in states where Kerry got the most ballots. In California, 24 percent of voters, almost one in four, said they never attend church, and they went for Kerry 63 to 34 percent. In New York, those who claimed no religion at all voted for Kerry by 78 percent to 19 percent. These eager atheists comprised 12 percent of New York voters, and they offset those Catholics in New York who favored Bush by 51 percent to 48 percent.

The Catholic Vote

Yet, even as many of these numbers offset each other, they signaled an important fact to Democrats in 2008, one noticed right away by Mrs. Clinton: If a Democrat can peel off a sizable sliver of these religious voters, while continuing to win the nonreligious vote, that Democrat can sink the Republican nominee. This is especially true when analyzing the Catholic vote in 2004.

It was frequently asserted that George W. Bush won the 2004 presidential election because of religious voters, especially evangelical Protestants. What was not commonly noted was that John F. Kerry lost the election because he failed not only to win religious voters generally but Catholics specifically. Kerry lost because he lost Catholics, an amazing fact when one considers that Kerry himself is Catholic. Kerry lost the Catholic vote to Bush by at least a million. A Catholic with a major party nomination traditionally would have won the Catholic vote by several million. Decades earlier, another Democratic senator from Massachusetts with the initials “JFK,” John F. Kennedy, won an extremely close election because he overwhelmingly took the Catholic vote.