Biden's Choice Shows Catholic Vote Matters

Biden's Choice Shows Catholic Vote Matters

Monday, August 25, 2008 12:19 PM

By: George J. Marlin


Sen. Barack Obama’s selection of Sen. Joseph Biden underscores the important of the Catholic vote this election year. And though Biden is pro-choice, Obama thinks he can pull enough wary Catholics over in key states like Pennsylvania to beat McCain come election day.


Already the primaries between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Obama offered the first skirmishes in the battle for Catholics, a voting bloc long neglected by their party.

Vying for their votes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, Clinton downed whiskey shots while Obama tried his hand at bowling. Why did these wine-and-arugula Democrats morph into beer-and-burger candidates? Because Democrats finally realized that aging, practicing Catholics who live in key battleground Rust Belt states are the pivotal swing voters who elect presidents.

It was not always this way. For decades, Catholics were loyal to the Democratic Party and voted in record numbers for their presidential nominees. The parents and grandparents of today’s Catholic voters survived the Great Depression thanks to their parishes and local Democratic political clubhouses.

But in the post-World War II era, the Democratic Party emerged as the home for social engineers. Their cultural elitism and contempt for blue-collar Catholic workers and their values engendered a new generation of political progeny who approached these voters with an attitude of “noblesse oblige,” of moral self-righteousness, of arrogance.

As a result, in the late 1960s there was a shift in the Catholic vote. They turned to Republicans who were socially conservative, supportive of New Deal programs, and critical of the Great Society’s largesse. They became known as Nixon and Reagan Democrats, and since 1972 every White House winner has carried a majority of the Catholic vote.

Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign focused on the Catholic vote, particularly among Hispanics and Catholics living in areas hard hit by the recession. This selective strategy worked. Clinton, who won with a plurality of only 43 percent of the vote, beat President George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot by carrying heavily Catholic states in the Northeast and Midwest.

About 3 million Catholic voters deserted Bush in 1992 — mostly nonpracticing “cafeteria” Catholics. The returns confirmed The Wall Street Journal’s analysis: “To be sure, the Catholic vote, which represents about a quarter of the November electorate, isn’t monolithic. The group is split by ethnic heritage, generations, education level, and between the huge blocs that speak English and Spanish.”

Throughout the remainder of the century this split widened, with Clinton in 1996 and Al Gore in 2000 carrying cafeteria Catholics by wide margins; practicing Catholics voted for Republicans.

In 2004, President George W. Bush’s camp was willing to concede the cafeteria Catholics, but not practicing or Hispanic Catholics. To appeal to these Catholics, Bush reversed pro-abortion executive orders, proposed faith-based initiatives, voucher experiments, and limits on stem-cell research. He also signed into law a ban on partial-birth abortion.

As a result, Bush carried an outright majority of Catholics over Sen. John Kerry, a baptized Catholic. This Catholic turnout for Bush contributed to the margin of victory in key battleground states and helped narrow Kerry’s margins in blue states, thus assuring a popular-vote majority for the president.

The most significant Bush gains were in Hispanic communities, which are 70 percent Catholic and a key GOP target for more than a decade. In 1996, 21 percent of Hispanics voted for Sen. Bob Dole; 34 percent voted for Bush in 2000; and in 2004, 41 percent cast their ballots to re-elect the president. Hispanics, who represented 10 percent of the 2004 electorate, cast 12 million of their votes for Bush — a 2.4 million increase over 2000’s totals.

Since their 2004 defeat, elements of the Democratic power structure, led by New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, have attempted to reach out to practicing Catholics. A 2004 memo titled "Reclaiming the White Catholic Vote," prepared by the leftist political tactics group Democracy Corps, conceded that pro-life sentiment is growing among Catholic voters and was “a factor in the recent losses and one of the blockages for Democrats, at least in the Midwest.”

With 55 percent of white Catholics polled admitting they were more inclined to support a pro-life Democratic candidate, the memo recommended that the party should present itself as one that believes “in a woman’s right to choose but believes all sides should come together around the common goal of preventing and reducing the number of abortions, with more sex ed, including abstinence, access to contraception, and more adoption.”

In 2008, Hillary Clinton’s strategy to paint Obama as an out-of-touch elitist who could not relate to the concerns of blue-collar Catholics paid off. In the Rust Belt states, she carried these voters by huge majorities — 70 percent in Pennsylvania alone.

The big question now: how important are these Catholics in this fall’s presidential election? The answer: very important.

If the 2008 race is as closely contested as the 2000 and 2004 elections, practicing Catholics in Rust Belt states will decide the outcome. That’s because these aging Catholics are disproportionately represented — their cafeteria Catholic offspring have migrated to economically prosperous states.

According to liberal political pollster Stanley Greenberg, these Catholics are “those most committed to, and identified with, the church and most likely to bring their Catholic identity into politics.”

In this region, Obama’s public record on social issues could prove fatal. He is not only pro-abortion and pro-funding of abortion, he voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion; opposed legislation prohibiting taking minors across state lines to procure an abortion; opposed giving legal protection to babies who survive an abortion; and voted against Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Obama will also have to live down his elitist remark that white-working class voters cling to their religion and guns because they are “bitter.”

Obama’s best approach, though still a “Hail Mary” strategy, is to peel away some of the practicing Catholic vote by appealing to their economic concerns and labor union allegiances.

On the other hand, Republican Sen. John McCain’s pro-life, pro-gun, pro-military positions could energize enough of these voters to swing their votes into his column.

Regardless of the 2008 election outcome, one thing is certain: the claim by many political pundits that the influence of the Catholic vote is declining, and marginalized in a nation dominated by secular humanism, is wrong. The Catholic vote still matters.

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George J. Marlin is author of "The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact." (St. Augustine’s Press).




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