Monday, August 26, 2024

Part I

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The DNC and Harris Campaign Try Major Rebrand: Democrats Embrace Lack of Specificity on Major Policy Issues, Abortion on Demand, and Much More

Today on The Briefing, we need to do something of a reset after the two national conventions are now completed, the Democratic National Convention over last Thursday night in Chicago, but there is so much to unpack on both sides of the partisan divide. We need to think through some of these issues and try to prioritize what’s really important, I think, as Christians look at this picture and try to understand it. First of all, we need to go back to Chicago because there’s just a lot left on the table that took place at the Democratic National Convention, so we’re going to get to the presidential and vice presidential nominees very quickly, but let me just say that a part of what happened at the Democratic National Convention was an attempted rebranding of one of America’s two major political parties.

Now, there’s another sense in which Donald Trump has sought to do something of the same with the Republican Party, but not nearly with the self-evident ambition you saw among the Democrats and frankly not with the same kind of clarity with which the Democrats were confusing the issues. Now, I said that deliberately, because I think what is being attempted on the Democratic side is an attitudinal or, say, just a brand refreshing rather than a change in terms of the ideological substance and the policy proposals. If anything, I think it’s demonstrably true that the Democrats are lurching greatly to the left, and over the next several weeks, we’re going to have to unpack that issue by issue, and we’ll do so while documenting what we are seeing happening on the Democratic side.

Also, on the Democratic side, there was a rebranding of sorts having to do with the fact that, as I said, there was a real insult to the President of the United States, Joe Biden, by putting him on the Monday night opening night of the convention, basically, let’s let the old man speak, then let’s get him out of the way. That’s what was going on there.

But you also understand once Biden gave a speech, why the Democrats felt they needed to do this. It was a microcosm of why they eventually came to the calculation that they had to get him out of the race. The first and preeminent issue in terms of getting him out of the race had to do with his age and decline, but the larger issue, perhaps even beyond age and decline, was the fact that the President really represents an old brand that the current generation of Democrats wants to get rid of and in a hurry. But it’s also very interesting to see that when they tried to do that, they did go back to the past, not the Joe Biden present/past, but the past to the party with two couples, two power couples without whom the Democratic Party simply doesn’t know who it is.

The first couple, of course, would be Bill and Hillary Clinton. The second power couple would be Barack and Michelle Obama. Now, it’s a really interesting thing that the Democrats are going back to those two power couples, but then again, they really are the branding power of the past that the Democrats want to talk about, and it’s also really interesting that in both cases, you have very powerful women. Now, they’re not powerful in the same way. So when you go back to Bill and Hillary Clinton, no one wants to talk about Whitewater, no one wants to talk about, well, just imagine all the people we could mention, particularly related to Bill Clinton’s sex scandals. They don’t want to talk about that. They really don’t want to talk about the time that Hillary Clinton spent in the United States Senate. They’re not even really talking about the time that she spent in the Obama administration as US Secretary of State.

They’re really harkening back to the 2016 campaign against Donald Trump, and so far as the Democrats are concerned, she’s now a vindicated woman, she’s now a vindicated candidate. But you need to remember that Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, and you also need to remember that Bill Clinton was not so well remembered by his own party as he left office. And when it comes to many policy positions, the Democratic Party now would condemn the positions held by Bill Clinton when he was President back during the 1990s.

The other Power couple, of course, you’re talking about Barack and Michelle Obama, and the big news on that score was that even as Barack Obama mentioned, speaking after his wife, Michelle Obama’s turned into a dynamic public speaker. There’s just no question about that. It’s also interesting that in a real sense, she was sent out as the person to do the verbal hits directed against the Republican ticket, and she really sent out some very clear political messages.

But the big question, of course, the big question everyone wants to know is one that was actually articulated by the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and that is is Michelle Obama eventually going to run for national office? It’s hard to see how her brand at least doesn’t factor into the Democratic future. But of course, right now, all that’s on hold. It’s all on hold, of course, because the current obsession of necessity for the Democratic Party is the Harris-Walz ticket, not some future imaginary ticket, even though the number of Democrats who are lining up as national candidates for the future, well, that’s like a big holding pattern at a major American airport. But we have to deal with 2024, and right now it is the Harris-Walz ticket that is the big deal.

And the most important thing we need to recognize there at the DNC was another attempted rebranding. Kamala Harris was politically rebranded, and I would say just in crass political terms with enormous success with the complicity of the media. And with the unprecedented and frankly largely inexplicable unity of the Democratic Party, on the one hand, it was almost as if the instructions for the Kamala Harris nomination were just add water and stir, because that’s what the Democrats did. You would’ve thought that this had been a longstanding plan on the part of the Democrats, but it shows just how determined they are to reverse what they had expected to be a blowout loss with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, to what could well be a win with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.

But if you want to know why the Democrats are excited, it’s because of this. It is because a younger generation of Democrats understands that they win not just if a Democrat wins, but they really win if Kamala Harris rather than Joe Biden wins, because Kamala Harris, who is indeed a San Francisco Democrat, is far to the left of Joe Biden. As a matter of fact, anyone close to Kamala Harris for the last several years has said that how she has functioned as Vice President is basically to function in waiting, and she has agreed, of course, to support the policy positions of President Biden, because that’s her job. But there’s been a wink-wink all along to the Democratic left, and that’s where she was when she ran for the nomination in 2019 for the 2020 cycle. She didn’t get as far as even winning a single delegate, but she did get the vice presidential nomination. That turns out to have been absolutely transformative.

That was all evident in her address on Thursday night. By the time the Vice President got up to give her address introduced with all of the traditional political decoration, the fact is that she had already been rebranded before she began to speak, but just in terms of political speeches, her speech was very strong.

By the way, here’s a little hint to other candidates. Her speech was strong in part because it was 37 minutes long. 37 minutes turns out to be far more powerful than 90 minutes. Again, hint, hint. But it’s also interesting to note that on both sides of the aisle, observers and commentators on her speech noted the same thing, it’s all vague generalities. And you had Democrats saying, “Well, look. She’s only been the front-runner in terms of being the anticipated nominee for a matter of days or weeks.” Well, of course, the response to that is twofold. Number one, whose fault is that? But number two, she is now the Democratic nominee. The vote is coming in November. She better clarify some issues quickly, or it becomes very clear she doesn’t want to clarify them.

That gets to the second issue raised even by major Democratic strategists. Look, in terms of her relationship right now with the polls and her status with the commentary media and the media class is so positive, why would she mess that up by getting specific about policies? And if you have a complicit media not demanding those specifics, particularly hard answers when it comes to questions, then why would the candidate do the hard thing and actually get specific? Why would she even do something like hold a press conference where she has to ask unscripted questions? The fact is no one really expects Kamala Harris to do particularly well at that. That seems to be the explanation for why she’s not doing it. But I think we also have to add something else, and that is that in that kind of setting, it is hard or at least harder to be more generalized and evasive when it comes to details than it is when you’re reading off a teleprompter to a friendly audience.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal commented this way, “The lack of specificity is part of a strategy to separate herself from the Biden-Harris years by calling for a vague New Way Forward. The idea seems to be that the less specific she is, the less chance she’ll be associated with the unpopular parts of the Biden tax, regulate and spend agenda that produced a decline in real American incomes. Until she disavows this agenda, voters can assume they are also her proposals.” I read that because I think it’s a very important argument, and it’s self-evidently true. The Biden-Harris ticket had one set of policies, but Biden really established the policies. The Harris-Walz ticket has vague generalities, not many proposals. So at this point, the strategy on the Republican side should simply be to say, “Well, unless you repudiate the Biden plan, you are the Biden plan. You were as Vice President. And furthermore, if you have a position different than President Joe Biden, you’re going to have to respond with enough detail to show in specificity where in the world you’re supposedly different.”

Now, I want to be clear again. I think her policies would be very different. I think they would be significantly even to the left of Joe Biden. She doesn’t want to tell the American people that. She certainly doesn’t want to tell that crucial undecided middle vote, where on both sides, frankly, the election is going to be won or lost.

Okay, there’s a lot to talk about there, but in terms of one issue, which is unapologetically a first concern for evangelical Christians, it’s the issue of the sanctity of human life, it’s the question of abortion, and I think the Washington Post got it exactly right. Here’s the headline, “Democrats fully embrace abortion rights at the DNC.” Fully embrace.

I just want to remind Christians in the United States that what took place at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last week, it was a comprehensive embrace of abortion as an issue and as a cause in a way that has happened never before in American politics. Now, I’m not saying, of course, there weren’t pro-abortion candidates and politicians before. Of course, there were, but they weren’t as candid as they were last week in Chicago. I’m not saying they didn’t have radical intentions on abortion, they did, but they basically hid those in the past of the Democratic Party. They put them right up front and center. Remember the Planned Parenthood of the Great Rivers? Remember the Van? Remember the vasectomies, and remember the medical abortions and the other things that were taking place right there at the Democratic National Convention? By the way, people come out and say, “Well, that wasn’t done by the DNC.” Well, guess what? The DNC doesn’t do abortions. They do abortion as an issue, and boy, did they.

Now something else we’re going to be watching very carefully. It’s something that was at least acknowledged by Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer for the New York Times, their headline “Beyond Restoring Roe, Democrats See Moment to Reimagine Abortion Rights.” By reimagine they mean rethink the whole thing. We’re going to have to take some time to unpack that. It’s an issue of frontline concern for evangelical Christians. It is just an acknowledgement, however, even in that headline, that the shift towards abortion rights and its advocacy in public all the time by name using the word, that is now so much a part of the Democratic Party project, that it is going to be even an evolving ambition we’re going to see in the course of the next several weeks on the campaign.

And let me point out something else I find very interesting here. The pressure for further specificity towards the expansion of abortion rights and the entire project of abortion, what’s going to get the attention of the Democratic Party is not that there will be demands for specificity coming from Pro-Lifers. No, it’s going to be demands for specificity coming from the abortion rights momentum, coming from the abortion rights movement. They’re going to be pressing. We want to know how far you will go with this. And of course, as I often say, it is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who answers that question, and that is his advocacy, indeed his signature on some of the most radical pro-abortion legislation and all of American history.

Now, that I have mentioned the vice presidential nominee, let me just say that his role with the convention was, as is historically the case, to be kind of the attack dog. That’s how this works, and frankly, the same thing’s true in the Republican side. The same thing’s true almost every election cycle. You have the presidential candidate, the vice presidential nominee tends to go on more open attack against the other party than the presidential nominee, simply so the presidential nominee can look one way or another, more or less, presidential. And so that’s happening on both sides. That’s the role of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to the Democrats. It’s the role for Senator JD Vance among the Republicans.

But I want to point to one giant incongruity, and that is the fact that the Tim Walz ad, the Tim Walz persona is clearly in congress with the Tim Walz governorship. When you look at Tim Walz as a politician, as an officeholder, he’s far to the left of the Tim Walz with the plaid shirt from small town Nebraska or from rural Minnesota. It’s a very different picture, and I’m going to talk more about that. I’m going to go into detail showing that what has to happen on the Democratic side, given the fact that they subverted so many masculine symbols, they have to have a vice presidential candidate, at least in most cases, where they can actually say, “This is like America’s dad,” and I’m going to pull up some documentation to show you the cycles in which the Democrats have done exactly that. Every time, it’s like, “This is entirely new. Look, Tim Walz, America’s Dad.” Of course, that’s a brand, not a reality.

The other big issue when it comes to Tim Walz is the selectivity with which he makes his argument. So for instance, I can’t even quote his most quoted line from most of his on-the-stump speeches, including his Democratic National Convention speech. I’m not going to use all the language, I’ll just say he says, “Mind your own business.” He says it a bit more colorfully. Well, he’s meaning mind your own business as a defense of abortion rights, but he’s not going to say that’s all there is to it. It has to do with IVF, and it has to do with contraception, it has to do with the trans and LGBTQ issues. It has to do with all these things.

And let me just remind you as you think about that, that when you have someone on the left in particular say, “Mind your own business,” the government’s position should be, “Mind your own business,” remember, they’re the ones who sic the regulatory state on everybody. They’re the ones who want the administrative state to put its tentacles into everything. They’re the ones who want to tell your Christian school what it can and cannot teach, and they’re the ones who want to tell the states whether they can or cannot offer vouchers and other forms of education for parental choice and education. They’re the ones who want to actually intervene between parents and children when it comes to parental rights on issues, say, of gender identity and their children. They’re the people in California who push the legislation saying that the schools don’t even have to tell parents the gender identity of their own children when they are at school.

So just remember that when you have a politician say, “My policy is mind your own business,” you better look a little more closely, because the person saying that might at that very moment be about the business of trying to mind your business. Just ask conservative parents in Minnesota.

Part II

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Trump’s Confusing Signals on Abortion: Former President Puts His Own Political Base at Risk, Wondering What He Really Means

But on this first day back from the weekend, frankly, there’s so much for us to talk about on both sides of the partisan divide. We have to go to the Republican side. We have to go to Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and the post he put up just in recent days in True Social about the fact that his administration will be historic for women and their reproductive rights.

Now, the fact is no one knows what he means by that, but it’s hard to avoid the assessment made by many, including folks of the New York Times, who said, “The apparent meaning is that he is holding a more moderate position on abortion and trying to make clear that women shouldn’t fear his position on abortion.” Now, this is the same candidate, who, of course, went in office, nominated three conservative justices to the US Supreme Court, leading to the reversal of Roe v Wade and the Dobbs Decision in 2022, which just even days ago, he said he was proud of as an accomplishment.

So we’re not talking about a consistent line here. I think that’s by intention. I think we’re looking at an intentional confusion and lack of specificity. A little suggestion here, a little suggestion there. But the fact is that in that True Social post, I think the former president inexcusably confused the issue and quite honestly left Pro-Life evangelical voters wondering what in the world does he actually stand for? This is someone who up until, say, 2015 was pro-abortion in every way, or at least Pro-Choice as was defined at the time. And then he tended to move in a more Pro-Life position, certainly associating with Pro-Life voters and asking for their vote.

And I have to say that what I’m left with when it comes to the, say, Harris candidacy or the Trump candidacy is what they have done when they’re in office. And at this point when it comes to the Vice President on any host of issues, she’s a part of the Biden administration. So unless she says otherwise, and then when she makes a change, it’s probably going to be even to the left, she’s basically saddled with the Biden positions. I’m going to say when it comes to Donald Trump, at least a part of what voters have to think about is what he actually did when he was President of the United States for four years on, for example, the issue of abortion.

And so yes, I’m extremely frustrated that the former president has taken the tack he has. Furthermore, I’m just incredibly disappointed, and I have to wonder at the political logic. Why would he make his stable base unstable on this issue? It is inexplicable to me. Now, regardless of what the former president is saying, I have to come back and say when he says that he would veto legislation that would be a national law putting Roe back in place, if Congress sought to legislate Roe v Wade or even to come up with national legislation on abortion, he said he’d veto it, that is a far superior position to Kamala Harris running for Congress to pass such legislation and promising she would pass it.

And as I said, it’s dishonest to say that would be even as bad as just putting Roe back in place, she’s made public comments, and frankly, she’s chosen a vice presidential nominee in which that kind of statement becomes ludicrous. It would be far beyond the pro-abortion logic even of Roe. But you also have the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party making a statement over the weekend saying that he thinks the President would also veto any congressional legislation that would come to his desk that would be a Pro-Life position or a ban on abortions nationwide. And so Senator Vance said he thinks that the president, that is to say, if the former president’s elected president, again, he would veto that legislation too.

I would say, “Well, I guess that’s consistent in saying there should be no national legislation,” and frankly, that is still, I just want to underline this, that still leaves the Republican ticket in a position of being the only possibility of having someone elected president who says he will not sign a law that would be pro-abortion when it comes to national policy. So again, there’s a difference, but I just don’t understand why the Republicans are destabilizing their own base on this question. But at a deeper level, I’m just morally offended that there would be a lack of clarity on something as basic as the sanctity and dignity of human life.

I feel like evangelical Christians are left in a very awkward position. We are left with one candidate who carries some of our hopes, and we have another candidate who carries almost all of our fears on this issue. So that’s clarifying, but I’m going to suggest that the Republican ticket is going to be greatly strengthened if it clarifies rather than confuses this issue.

Part III

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The Boy Loves His Dad: Controversy Over Gov. Tim Walz’s Teenage Son Reveals Need for Reminder and Recovery of Common Grace as Theological Category

But okay, today as we come to a conclusion, I feel that it’s a moral obligation and frankly a rare theological opportunity for me to talk about one thing that you know America’s talking about, and that’s been the response of some people to what happened when Governor Walz took to the stage on Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention. And his family, of course, was watching and applauding, and his seventeen-year-old son, Gus, was overcome with emotion and simply looking to the cameras and to the crowd pointed to his dad and just very proudly said three times, “That’s my dad. That’s my dad. That’s my dad.” Now, I will tell you I saw that live, and my heart was warmed. My heart was not warmed towards Tim Walz as a potential Vice President of the United States. My heart was not at all warmed towards Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. But at that moment, you saw a portrait of Tim Walz the dad, and you saw it through the words and through the face, through the sight of Gus, his seventeen-year-old son, who was so proud of him.

Now, we’ve learned a lot since then. For one thing, we’ve learned that Gus is diagnosed with ADHD, what’s called a nonverbal learning disorder and anxiety disorder. He was showing a bit more emotion perhaps, I think we can say that safely, than a lot of seventeen-year-old sons would, even in that circumstance and even when equally proud of their dads. But that just added to the moment. It didn’t take away from the moment, it added to the moment.

And there were some on the right, and again, I’m not saying conservatives and I’m certainly not saying Christian conservatives, and there were some figures on the right who made fun of the boy or at least took the opportunity to take a shot. Now, let me just say in terms of Christian ethics, just in terms of basic human decency, that’s uncalled-for. Not only is it uncalled-for, it’s just absolutely wrong, needs to be called out for what it is.

But I see a rare opportunity here, a rare opportunity for a theological clarification and to talk about something that’s just really important theologically that many Christians don’t think about, because the big issue here is not just mere etiquette, it’s not just people being rude and mean. It is many people, and I think this means even many evangelical Christians who saw that, and I think frankly whose hearts were touched by it, failing to understand just how much of the glory of God shows up in that kind of situation.

And this takes some theological thinking, and I want you to follow along with me because this is really important. In order to understand how we should see that picture as Christians, we need to understand the doctrine of common grace. Now, this means that Christians have to think in terms of two kinds of grace because the Scripture presents both. You have saving grace, and then you have common grace. You have the grace of redemption and the grace which is given to all in creation. The original thought about what common grace is goes back to two things, the fall, human evil, and the rise of sin with Adam and Eve, and then also the flood when God brought judgment upon the earth. But remember, he saved the family of Noah and repopulated the earth.

So the issue is when you look at that, you recognize that all human beings, simply by the fact that we’re not destroyed, we’re even given the gift of life, and we are given sustenance, we’re given breath. The Bible says that, “The Lord causes it to rain upon the just and the unjust.” That’s common grace. We don’t deserve rain. We don’t deserve the warmth of the sun. We don’t deserve food. We don’t deserve family. But those are given to human beings for the continuation of human society, and they’re not gifts to us of evolution and cosmic chance. They’re the gifts to all humanity of our one true and living God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who grants salvation to those who are in Christ and come to Christ by faith in saving grace, but gives common grace to all. Or to put it a different way, those who are in Christ are those who’ve received that saving grace, that special grace of salvation. Those who are merely in the world have received common grace by the fact that God has given life and allowed us to enjoy.

You could also look at issues such as marriage and family and love, and you could look also at metaphors in Scripture, which turn out to be very powerful. God gives to all people bread, but to those who are in Christ, Christ is the very bread of life. So you understand there is bread by common grace, that’s the bread we eat with our mouths, and then there’s the bread of life, which is received by God’s sheer grace and mercy unto salvation.

And so you look at this, you recognize, “Okay, this means that we should celebrate when we see common grace in operation. We should celebrate when we see a mother who isn’t a Christian and has never heard the gospel or has maybe even heard of Christianity, but has not come to saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ when she loves her child and cares for that child.” That is not only something that is nice, that’s a demonstration of God’s common grace. It’s a demonstration of something that actually brings God is creator and Lord overall glory. And so we should want children to be fed. We should want children to be loved. We should want streets to be clean. We should want government to run efficiently.

The reformer, John Calvin in the 16th century, had to come up with something like common Grace when he asked the hard question, “How is it that so many ancient philosophers knew some things that were true? There has to be some explanation for that. They’re not just that smart.” And you say, “No. Well, even the things they discerned is what they even understood maybe to be the laws of nature, they turn out to be demonstrations of common grace.” The fact they don’t know it’s common grace doesn’t mean it’s any less common grace. And common grace means that when Christians see it, we know, not through the eyes of common grace, but through the eyes of saving grace, we know that God is bringing glory to himself by showing his love for all humanity in giving sun and rain and mothers and fathers and love, and just all the things that we see as goods that can only be explained–Christians know–by God and by God’s common grace, his grace, universal grace given to all people everywhere.

And that means that Christians have to learn how to praise God from our understanding of special grace when we see his glory in common grace, like when we see a father love his son, and when we see a son love his father, that does not mean we agree with the father. Frankly, it doesn’t even mean we agree with the son on many issues. That’s not the point. The point is there’s something beautiful that brings glory to the one true and living God and a testimony to his benevolence, to his human creatures, even after our sin, that you would see such a sweet expression of excited joy on the heart of a fifteen-year-old son about his father getting up to speak before an audience.

There’s just something that we need to see there that, quite frankly, is not a matter of etiquette, it’s not even a matter of mere morality. It’s a matter of theology. The only way you can explain that is because it’s about the one true and living God, his character and his glory, glory seen in that fleeting moment and something that is so rarely seen, and perhaps even the unexpected nature of that son’s excitement about his father is something God wanted us to see and to his glory to understand and to enjoy.