I’m posting a few back-and-forths from a recent interview I did with Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean about the DNC’s stepped-up religious outreach program, called Faith in Action. A couple of the more telling lines, in my opinion, are these:

What I believe is not that the people disagree with our values–they believed that we didn’t have any.
The issues are not why people vote. Values are why people vote.

It’s ironic that Dean, who is not deeply religious himself, would be the one to make reaching what the DNC calls “values-first voters” a core party of the Democratic Party’s mission. Here’s more:
In a recent interview, you talked about the need to reduce abortions and about pregnancy prevention. Have you changed on the abortion issue?

This is not a quote unquote let’s move to the middle strategy. I don’t believe in that. What I believe is not that the people disagree with our values–they believed that we didn’t have any. [Our polling after ’04 election] showed that in states like Arkansas, they agreed with us on most of the issues but the reason they didn’t vote for Democrats is that we didn’t have the courage of our convictions. So you want to stand up for something. That’s what people really want. So when I meet with [conservative religious leaders] I don’t say, “We’re not as pro-abortion as you think.” I say that we think there should be an awful fewer number of abortions, more funding for sex education and contraception.

Has making religious outreach at the DNC a top priority given you a kind of education in American religions?

I took a lot of comparative religion courses in high school and college, so I knew the nuts and bolts. But I didn’t know how the community really worked, whether it be evangelicals or observant Jews or Muslims. That was the real education, not that Martin Luther said this or that. And the truth is, you find the answer is that they are not so different from everybody else. Most human beings have more in common with each other than they do separating them. Some of them would be horrified to hear me say that, but it’s true.

The first poll you signed off on at the DNC in 2005 was one that focused on religious voters. Why?

There is lot of stuff we copied from the RNC [Republican National Committee], but we can’t copy their divisiveness. We have to reach out to every different person in the country. There’s no reason why we should not reach out to people of faith and make a point to ask those people for their vote. The issues are not why people vote. Values are why people vote.

Some minority groups that make up the Democratic Party base are apparently worried that in doing outreach to white Christians, the DNC will compromise their interests.

I knew we were not going to alienate religious African Americans because there is a bond between black and white people of faith and faith is very strong in the black community. We’re also doing Muslim outreach. The American Muslim community is going to do a lot more to restore our relations with moderate Islamic world. They’re eventually going to play a huge role in bringing Islamic countries into the modern world.