TLDR: Pandering to Religious Wingnuts Is Always a Terrible Idea

Politico has a piece by Michael Wear, former "faith outreach coordinator" under President Obama (and author of a piece last year on the Democrats' "religion problem"), advising Doug Jones to pander to white evangelicals:

[T]here’s one potentially crippling problem for Jones: his extreme position on abortion. In a recent interview, NBC’s Chuck Todd asked Jones, “[W]hat are the limitations that you believe should be in the law when it comes to abortion?” Jones responded that he is a “firm believer that a woman should have the freedom to choose what happens to her body,” and affirmed his support for contraception and for a woman’s right to “the abortion that they might need”....

It would be difficult for Jones to nuance his personal position on abortion through rhetoric alone at this point, because his public statements have been so strident and well-circulated by conservative media and the Moore campaign. Instead, the stakes of this election might justify an extraordinary step: He could pledge to vote “present” on abortion-related legislation and amendments....

It is not just that Jones’ positions on abortion and religious freedom are out of step with Alabama voters—his answers suggest a lack of interest in understanding the legitimate concerns of many Alabamians. The Supreme Court has had to rule on religious freedom multiple times over just the past decade; clearly, concerns about religious freedom are not simply the result of evangelical fever dreams....

Being a better person than Roy Moore is not enough: He’s going to have to do everything he can, within the bounds of his own conscience, to reasssure Alabamians that he won’t be pushing an agenda on social issues that’s out of step with their values.

The first problem with this is the self-serving nature of arguments that My Policy Preferences Are Good Politics. Wear thinks abortion is icky, so he says it's politically advantageous to call abortion icky. He wants Democrats to pander to religious conservatives, so he says it's politically smart to do so. Nearly all of us are prone to that particular kind of dishonesty (see: Bernie Would've Won, among a million similar examples), but that doesn't make it any smarter or more useful.

The bigger problem, though, is the assumption of good faith on the part of white evangelical conservatives:

There is also a constituency of white evangelicals in Alabama who care deeply about civil rights and overcoming racism, and Jones could win some of them over by explicitly calling them in as partners, as opposed to allowing Moore to claim the evangelical voice on the subject....

It may not be enough in Alabama, a state that has up until now been virtually assured of electing a pro-lifer, but [Jones] could at the very least make solid commitments around supporting adoption and pursuing partnership with pro-life groups to find common ground ways to continue our national progress reducing the abortion rate....

The religious freedom of Christian employees to follow their faith, or of Christian institutions to organize around their beliefs, is inextricably tied to the right of Muslims, Sikhs, Jewish Americans and other faiths to do the same....Jones should tell Alabamians that he, unlike Moore, understands that religious freedom is either going to be protected for everyone or it will fail to exist for anyone, and he should commit to applying the same skill and passion to the issue he employed in prosecuting the KKK.

What a lovely notion. But of course, Democrats spent decades going down the rabbit hole of trying to find common ground on abortion, and their efforts were never met with good faith on the other side. There's zero evidence that it would buy us anything this time.

And if the 2016 election taught us anything, it's that the white evangelican identity is 100% fraudulent--that it has nothing to do with genuine religious belief, and everything to do with tribalism. So while there are presumably some white evangelical conservatives who "care deeply about civil rights", as a group they don't. And the white evangelical notion of "religious freedom" is the "freedom" to dominate, and it isn't extended to any other group. Talking about religious freedom for Muslims isn't going to do anything to appeal to people whose tribal identity is anti-Muslim. And there is no amount of pandering Democrats can do that will win over people whose tribal identity is anti-liberal.