At about 8:35 eastern time this morning, CNN cut away to a commercial with a teaser for the next segment flatly asserting that Democrats have been “ignoring the faithful for decades”, asking whether they would be able to reach them this year.

In 1976, Americans elected their first born-again president–Jimmy Carter, a Democrat. The next Democratic president, Bill Clinton, could “quote scripture with the best of them. wove religion into many of his speeches, and turned to the evangelist Billy Graham for counsel.   Al Gore and John Kerry each spoke about their faith in personal terms.

Perhaps CNN believes that Republicans have been more successful in mobilizing a segment of the faithful, though it is worth asking whether the Republicans have been ignoring people of faith who are not evangelical Christians for decades.  And, of course, the accepted narrative may (incorrectly) mark Republicans as devout and Democrats as dirty hippy atheists.  But it is simply factually incorrect for CNN to present, as received fact, the assertion that Democrats have been “ignoring the faithful” for decades.  That is sloppy journalism, to say the least.