One of the undercovered stories in American politics right now is how the Democrats are draping their political cause in religion in a way that is far more commonly associated with Republicans. The draft Democratic Party platform that was approved July 10 by a committee dominated by forces loyal to Senator Kerry includes five mentions of God. The preamble concludes with a reference to America as “one nation, under God.”The section on the economy begins with a reference to American workers and their “God-given talent.” The section on the environment promises “we will ensure that God’s gifts of nature bless all of God’s children for generations to come.” The section on civil rights says, “each of us should be as equal in the eyes of the law as we are in the eyes of God.”

And that’s not all. The draft Democratic platform also says that “Strong families…guided by faith, and filled with dreams are the heart of a strong America.” It says,”we honor the central place of faith in the lives of our people.…we believe that our nation, our communities and our lives are made vastly stronger and richer by faith.”

By contrast, the Republican platform that the then-governor of Texas, George W. Bush, ran on in 2000 included just one mention of God. There were just four mentions of God in the platform that George H.W. Bush ran on at the 1992 Houston convention at which Patrick Buchanan spoke of “a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America.”

Senator Kerry has also been stepping up his religious references on the campaign trail. When he spoke to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People last week, he quoted the Christian Bible twice and spoke of how his Vietnam War boatmates “all prayed to the same God,” as we noted in a July 16 editorial, “Kerry Gets Religion.”

The religious references are part of a shift to the center by the Democratic Par ty, just in time for the general election.

Think the Democratic environmentalists want to take away your pickup truck? “We support the American people’s freedom to choose whatever cars, SUVs, minivans and trucks they choose,” the platform draft says. Think the Democrats want to take away your gun? “We will protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms,” the platform says, misquoting the Constitution, which refers to the much more radical right to “keep and bear.” In any event, anti-gun extremists have always claimed that the Second Amendment applies not to Americans but to militias. In case that’s not enough to assure the rifle and shotgun-toting class, the Democrats’ draft platform promises, “We will open millions of new acres of land to public hunting and fishing.”

What about the economy? “We believe the private sector, not government, is the engine of economic growth and job creation,” the Democratic platform says. “Under John Kerry and John Edwards,99 percent of American businesses will pay lower taxes than today.”

The actual voting records of Mr. Kerry and Senator Edwards and their Democratic colleagues give the voters plenty of reasons to doubt whether these platform promises would be adhered to in a Kerry administration. It’ll be illuminating to see whether the platform positions meet much resistance from the left-wing interest groups — including parts of the press — that make up the Democratic Party’s activist core.

Still, in a political party where SUVs, hunting, tax cuts for corporations, the Second Amendment, and even God are not exactly universally popular, Mr. Kerry deserves some credit for staking out ground — even if it is merely rhetorical ground — on the right flank of his party’s base. That it’s ground already well occupied by President Bush is a sign of which party it really is whose ideas are on the ascendance with the mainstream of the American electorate.