History Repeats Itself for Catholics
[Editor's Note: This post is written by my uncle Val, who last contributed back in October of 2007, with a post entitled, "What is Patriotism?"]
Historically, in U.S. politics, when it comes to the popular vote at least, Catholics determine the winners in our presidential contests.
In fact, with the notable exception of George W. Bush eight years ago, no candidate in recent memory has entered the White House without securing a majority of the votes cast by Catholics, who now make up more than a fourth of the U.S. population.
Catholics also were a reliable constituency in the party of Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt. That had been true since the 1840s, when the first great wave of Catholic immigrants were essentially pushed into the Democrats’ arms by the anti-immigrant sentiments of the Know Nothings and Whigs, most of whom ended up in the new Republican Party.
Then Ronald Reagan came along and created a new political category, the “Reagan Democrats!” This strategy was a combination of the economic times and the symbiotic relationship between Conservative Republican and Conservative Catholic clergy. When the economy worsened under Bush I, Catholic voters went back to the Democrats and Bill Clinton.
Karl Rove, Bush’s strategic eminence grise, thought he’d found a way to pry Catholics, as ostensible social conservatives, out of the Democratic embrace and into a new conservative coalition using the so-called “wedge issues” of abortion, same-sex marriage, and aid to Catholic schools and social-service agencies.
Ironically, that approach isn’t working for John McCain, particularly in Pennsylvania, where strategists in both parties seem to agree the Republican nominee’s chances will rise or fall. If there’s any place in America where the traditional blue-collar, ethnic-white Catholics who voted in such numbers for Reagan and Bush continue to make their electoral clout felt, it’s in the Keystone State. Western Pennsylvania, where both McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, have campaigned so hard, is a citadel of family-minded, working-class, white ethnic Catholics.
In fact, nearly one-third of all Pennsylvanians are Catholics, and in recent weeks, McCain’s candidacy has received a major boost from their clerical leaders. Last week, the Cardinal of Philadelphia wrote in his archdiocesan newspaper: “The transcending issue of our day is the intentional destruction of innocent human life, as in abortion … [and] no intrinsic evil can ever be supported in any way.”
Yet Barack Obama continues to lead McCain by double figures in every reliable Pennsylvania poll. Aaccording to a recent New York Times/CBS poll, Obama holds a commanding 59% to 31% edge over McCain among Catholics nationwide, despite the fact that at least 50 of the country’s 197 Catholic bishops recently published articles or given interviews in which they argued that abortion, more than any other issue, ought to determine how members of their flock cast their votes. In Denver and St. Louis the presiding bishops have been two of the most forceful voices on making abortion the primary issue for Catholic voters; but polls now put Colorado in Obama’s column and have him slightly ahead in Missouri.
What we’re seeing in these three swing states — Pennsylvania, Coloroda, and Missouri — is the end of the Catholic vote as Republican political strategists have expected it to behave. Why? I see three major reasons.
First, the Catholic population is now so large it pretty much looks like the rest of America. National polls have shown for some time that, although Catholics are personally opposed to abortion, they believe it ought to be legal in nearly identical percentages to the rest of America.
Second, there has been a profound demographic shift occurring in the Catholic population. Nearly one-third of all American Catholics are now Latinos, as are more than 50% of all Catholics under 40. They have broken overwhelmingly for Obama because of his stands on the economy and immigration. This is identical to the Catholic immigration response in the 1840’s.
Finally, Catholics see their hierarchy as being selective on “what is moral and what is not.” They see Cardinals and Bishops as “obsessed” with abortion but ignoring their own teachings on Social Justice. They see a clergy afraid to condemn the Iraq War as immoral (as well as stupid), despite the fact that the Iraq War violates all the principles of what the Catholic Bishops have determined constitutes a “Just War.” And for decades, Catholics saw their hierarchy protect pedophile priests. Catholics see the history of their leaders as avoiding — or being on the wrong side of — all the major moral issues since the late 1950s: Civil Rights, the Vietnam War, Poverty, Sexism, Gays, Stem Cell Research, and the Iraq War.
What all this suggests is that, in this and coming election cycles, we may see a Catholic vote whose participation more closely resembles that of Jews. Nearly, 75% of Jews are overwhelmingly pro-Democratic, while a devout minority, the Orthodox, tends to be strongly Republican.
If you break the Catholic vote down in roughly the same pattern, you get something that looks like the current national spread. According to most reliable data, slightly less than one in four Catholics are Conservative and are more open to GOP policies, while the overwhelming majority of Catholics cast their lot with the domestic and foreign policies of the Democrats.
For these and other lesser reasons, the Catholic vote is returning to its historical roots – the Democratic Party – where it resided from 1840 through Wilson through FDR through JFK until Reagan/Bush I/Bush II. The Catholic teachings on all the Social Justice issues, plus the growth of the Hispanic sector in US Catholicism, have lead the vast majority of Catholics to be more socially liberal, and hence to vote this year for Obama and stay with the Democrats for a long time.