More on the center in American politics: from a Slate article on John Kerry's religious rhetoric,

As you may already know, one of America's two political parties is extremely religious. Sixty-one percent of this party's voters say they pray daily or more often. An astounding 92 percent of them believe in life after death. And there's a hard-core subgroup in this party of super-religious Christian zealots. Very conservative on gay marriage, half of the members of this subgroup believe Bush uses too little religious rhetoric, and 51 percent of them believe God gave Israel to the Jews and that its existence fulfills the prophecy about the second coming of Jesus.

Liberals could read these statistics and sneer about "those silly Republicans" were it not for the fact that it's the Democrats who hold these beliefs. And the abovementioned ultrareligious subgroup is not the so-called "Religious Right" but rather the so-called "African-Americans."

In my previous post, I wrote about Michael Berube's sarcastic take on whether John Kerry is significantly to the left of the American public, just like Bush is significantly to the right of it. Religion, as well as affirmative action and taxes, are issues where Kerry's position strays from that of the average voter.