Flashback to 2008: When Hillary Rodham Clinton wooed Christian conservatives

In the midst of a heated presidential campaign, it is interesting to occasionally look back to a moment in a prior election that offers an informative contrast. This is especially true when one of the current leading candidates — in today’s case, Hillary Rodham Clinton — was also in the thick of things in a past contest.

In some ways, the autumn of 2015 has been deja vu all over again for Clinton. In 2007, she had been the dominant candidate going into the early stages of the presidential race; if not the “prohibitive favorite” that she was assumed to be in this election, she was certainly the strongest bet to win the 2008 nomination. Then, along came an outsider with exceptional appeal. This year, it has been Sen. Bernie Sanders, the veteran socialist from Vermont who has never before run as a Democrat. Eight years ago, it was Sen. Barack Obama, a young, Hawaii-born, African American politician from Chicago who had barely been in office long enough to know the path from his office to the Senate floor.

In November, 2007, Obama got a pivotal endorsement from Oprah Winfrey. After the entertainment superstar subsequently traveled to Iowa to barnstorm for Obama, he took the lead among the state’s Democratic voters. When the Iowa caucuses were held on Jan. 3, 2008, Obama won, and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina came in second. Third-place Clinton was suddenly faced with a crisis: If she did not win the New Hampshire primary the following week, her candidacy would be in free fall.

Over the next seven days, the tightly managed, overly cautious candidate finally began to show a bit of humanity, even coming close to tears at an event one day before the vote. She squeaked through to win New Hampshire and, 11 days later, triumphed in Nevada. By the end of that month, a couple of prominent U.S. senators — Joe Biden from Delaware and Chris Dodd from Connecticut — and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson withdrew from the race. Edwards would hang in for awhile, (dropping out before a sex scandal suddenly wrecked his political career), but the central story of the 2008 primaries had begun: the marathon battle for delegates between Clinton and Obama.

Having won that crucial New Hampshire victory by letting down her guard and sharing her private side, Hillary tried to share even more. One new element she added to her campaign resume was her religious history. By playing up her youthful devotion to the Methodist Church, Clinton thought she might even attract a few votes from evangelical Christians.

That did not get her far with the religious right. On a tour through the Western states prior to the Super Tuesday primaries, I talked to a young minister at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., (a megachurch founded by Ted Haggard, the powerhouse pastor who disgraced himself in a drug and gay sex scandal). The minister told me he and other conservative clergy had been wooed by the Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry, in 2004. Kerry had shown the Bible he claimed to tote around with him, but the pastors did not buy it. Neither would any evangelical give a hoot about Clinton’s Methodism, the New Life preacher said.

I drew a cartoon (see it above) to illustrate the reception Clinton was likely to receive from conservative Christians, featuring a kid announcing her as the Antichrist. It seemed like a pretty good joke at the time. After Obama won the election, though, religious right websites were pushing the ominous possibility that he was the Antichrist — and they were not joking at all.

This time around, Clinton will probably not be trolling for votes in the megachurches. Her current rival, Sanders, has pushed her in a more progressive direction that promises to pay bigger dividends in the primaries. She has also gone out of her way to connect on a personal level with individual voters and to show her funny side on Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show.

She may not win, but Hillary Clinton is working hard to avoid the mistakes of her crimped campaign in 2007.

Twitter: @davidhorsey