An e-mail:

Kathryn, Your comment about McCain choosing Huckabee is quite, quite troubling. I’m an Evangelical born and raised, with bona fides from a good many of the established markers of the movement. Huckabee won’t help McCain. I would consider not voting if Huckabee is on the ticket. Why? Because young Evangelicals like myself (I’m 33, so not entirely young I suppose) are very much moving against the kind of older style Evangelical that Huckabee represents. In fact, the problem isn’t so much with McCain not reaching the same audience as Bush did, the problem is Evangelicalism is changing. A good many young, my age and younger, Evangelicals I know are passionate Obama supporters. I hate to say this but McCain isn’t likely to get those people back, and he’d be much, much better off cementing his support in other directions. I think that if he wins and governs well he could get the younger Evangelicals back in 2012, especially as Obama shows himself to be another typical politician over the next months. Evangelicals are going through a massive political identity crisis right now and should not, absolutely should not, be courted according to some outdated pre-2004 model. We are too disjointed right now for our collective views to be a determining factor, especially as doing so would alienate other voting groups.