The Democrats may sneer at the Republicans for their passion for God and Jerusalem, but it seems they are not immune to popular sentiment in respect either issue. That’s what one can take from the three astonishing voice votes by which the chairman of the Democratic National convention — over boos from the party delegates on the floor — rammed through two changes to the platform. One restored God to the text of the platform on which the President Obama will stand and the other restored the assertion that Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish state.

We don’t mind saying that we haven’t seen such rancor at a party convention since Chicago in 1968, when delegates on the floor shouted down Mayor Daley as police raided protesters in Grant Park. Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, who is chairing the convention this year, called for a vote on the amendments three times in the hope of getting an unambiguous endorsement of the changes by the required two-thirds. He should have declared it passed the first time. Each subsequent vote was met with more discord. The last one he gave to the ayes even though it was manifestly unclear that they’d won it.

The World Wide Web is flickering with a number of good accounts of the action on floor, including a dispatch of the New York Times. But none of them — at least none we’ve seen — gets the underlying issue quite right. A writer in the Daily Beast characterizes the Democratic Platform’s initial attempt to leave out the question of Jerusalem “an almost perfunctory rephrasing of the U.S. commitment to Israel in a way that does not fly in the face of longstanding U.S. policy.” It linked to a reprise of the allegedly long-standing policy published by Americans for Peace Now.

What such statements leave out is that longstanding policy was changed in 1995 by Congress. By an overwhelming bipartisan vote — 95 to five in the Senate and 374 to 37 in the House — Congress legislated what the law it passed established as a “Statement of the Policy of the United States.” It declared the policy to be that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected” and that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel.” So what flew in the face of American policy was not the declaration of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but the attempt to delete such a declaration.

The Democratic Party leadership has been made a fool of on this issue. Charlie Rose just wouldn’t let go of Senator Schumer, as he tried to weave and dodge his way through the Jerusalem issue. Bret Baier was so relentless in questioning Senator Durbin on the party’s attempt to leave God out of the platform — this a reference to the need to give “everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential” — that Mr. Durbin “nearly exploded,” as the story was reported in the Washington Post’s Web site.

Well, one would need a Terex dump truck to carry around all the umbrage the Democratic Party muckety-mucks were taking in respect of all this. But what could the Democrats possibly have expected? They have spent the better part of the past year — nay, past four years — maneuvering against the most religious Americans over such issues as, to name but several, same-sex marriage, abortion, school vouchers, and birth control. They have sought in all too many cases to cast the religious position as a form of bigotry.

The liberals are not the only ones who yearn for a day when these issues were not so eczemic. But how can they be surprised at the backlash that has now become the defining story of their convention? It is being reported that President Obama personally asked for God and Jerusalem to be put back into the platform. Our own prediction is that the issue will calm down when Mr. Obama adjusts the policies of his administration accordingly — or a new administration is brought in that takes a more modest and respectful approach.