According to this column by Naomi Schaefer Riley, some Democrats are not happy that the party is reaching out to theists. This is irrational—at least if the goal is to win the 2008 presidential election. Sometimes I think progressives would rather be pure (or, as they see it, right) than powerful. Does anyone think an avowed atheist (understood broadly to include agnosticism) will be elected president in the next century? I don’t see it. I think we’ll have a female president, a black president, a Jewish president, and a disabled president (maybe even a homosexual president) before we have an atheistic president.