Kimberly Hefling and Eric Gorski of the Associated Press wrote a story about the Catholic vote in the upcoming Democratic primary in Pennsylvania that might be described as schizophrenic.
On the one hand, their story noted the influence of religion in the lives of voters. On the other hand, their story failed to mention why the two Democratic presidential candidates are not seeking to accommodate those voters on hot-button social issues.
The story began promisingly enough:
Understanding Pennsylvania’s rich Catholic tradition and responding to it is an article of faith for Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama as the April 22 primary looms in the still unsettled and intense Democratic presidential race.
A bit further down in the story, the reporters mentioned the steps that the two remaining Democratic candidates have taken to woo Catholic voters:
Obama, unwilling to concede the Catholic vote, plans small round-table meetings and “listening sessions” with Catholic voters in Pennsylvania’s urban and rural areas, as well as e-mails and phone banks targeting Catholics.
In a nod to the diverse concerns of Catholic voters, the meetings will focus on Obama’s stands on the economy, jobs and health care, said former Indiana Rep. Tim Roemer, who has been reaching out to fellow Catholics on the campaign’s behalf. One goal is to gauge how issues such as race and the inflammatory remarks of Obama spiritual mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are playing with Catholics, Roemer said.
“We found Catholic voters aren’t really a lot different in terms of many of their concerns than the average voter,” Roemer said.
Clinton backers Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., last week wrote a letter to Pennsylvania Catholics emphasizing her plans on health care, mortgage foreclosures and fuel costs.
Clinton spokesman Mark Nevins said Catholics connect with Clinton’s message and Pennsylvanians value her ties to Scranton, where her father was born and raised and she was christened at the Court Street Methodist Church.
Yes, the story shows that Catholic Democrats have diverse concerns. But it also shows that one of those concerns is abortion. Sen. Bob Casey, Sr. is quoted as saying that. Also, the reporters in a capsule summary of Catholic voters nationwide say the same:
In the 1960s, Catholics overwhelmingly supported John F. Kennedy, the only Catholic elected to the White House. In recent years, many have moved toward Republican candidates, drawn by the party’s opposition to abortion … President Bush, a Methodist who opposes abortion rights, won 52 percent of the Catholic vote against Kerry, the practicing Catholic, in 2004.
So why isn’t Obama seeking to accommodate Catholic Democrats concerned about abortion? After all, the reporters note that among Pennsylvania Catholics he is trailing Clinton by 46 percentage points. A little accommodation could go a long way.
The reporters should have noted that it’s not as if Obama needs to abandon support for abortion rights. In 2005, top Democratic strategists wrote a public memo urging Democratic candidates to change their approach on abortion, emphasizing the need to reduce the number of abortions.
What’s more, the reporters mention the exclusion of Casey’s father at the 1992 Democratic convention, though not his public humiliation, such as the pin (see above photo) that pro-choice Democrats sold. This begs the question. Isn’t a key part of the story missing: Democratic candidates can’t fully reach out to religious voters because they have been cowed by liberal feminists, cultural liberals, and abortion industry leaders?
This is not some abstract question. My book quotes the late Casey and Roemer himself saying this. Amy Sullivan’s The Party Faithful quotes one anonymous Democratic politician and Roemer saying the same.
Perhaps Gorski and Hefling made a perfectly understandable mistake. They assumed that because Democratic leaders reached out to pro-life Democratic voters in the 2006 election, they don’t need to do so in 2008. But the assumption is invalid. Leaders of the party’s congressional can handpick candidates to fit individual (i.e. pro-life) districts, while leaders of the party’s presidential wing can’t.
Despite overlooking the Democratic leadership angle, Hefling and Gorski explored the religious concerns of Pennsylvania Democrats well. Although the reporters quoted only seniors and college students, they gave readers a nuanced understanding of voters’ religious concerns. Take this one:
Molitoris, who is from Plains near Scranton and is the student president at the University of Scranton, a Catholic Jesuit university, interned for Santorum’s campaign two years ago. Like his Catholic parents, he says he’s opposed to abortion, but he says he’s more willing to consider a candidate who is not. He says he thinks Obama would best represent the United States on the world stage.
“I’m pro-life, but I don’t want to look at just the pro-life issue alone to determine the quality of the candidate. I’ve taken more of, I guess, a holistic approach in looking at the whole entire package,” Molitoris said.
If only the reporters had given readers a similarly intriguing, subtle story about Democratic leaders. The reporters would, then, have gotten religion.
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Comments (12) |
March 27, 2008, at 2:17 pm
The real question is Do Catholics get Democrats? Today’s democrat party is all about power at all costs, starting with allowing abortion under any and all conditions. These so-called catholics quoting their traditional ties to the democrat party and that there are other issues than the respect for life is good for the democrat that wants their vote but not good for the idiot that thinks he/she is Catholic. If you haven’t noticed, not only do they not care about moral issues, they don’t care about America - hence the anti-American rhetoric that they spew, not only in America, but abroad as well. The old Democrat party that my father voted for left the democrat vs republican issues at the border and became “Americans” when they went abroad. Not these days. Obama is fun to listen to but be careful what you wish for.
March 27, 2008, at 3:52 pm
Funny, I think the same thing about the lying, slandering, pandering, anti-democratic, borrow and spend, constitution trashing republic party members you think of Democrats.
But to Mark’s basic point. Hillary Clinton said she wants to make abortion “safe, legal and rare”. Obama spoke to the need for education etc to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and thus abortions: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/06/obama-explores-abortion-issue/
March 27, 2008, at 4:01 pm
just curious:
why the picture of Cardinal O’Malley?
March 27, 2008, at 4:09 pm
I suspect that the Jesuits at the University of Scranton must be sinfully negligent in informing their students of the social teachings of the Church, if one of their students could say that he can’t decide which [pro-abortion] Democrat to vote for. Before the 2004 US elections the then-Cardinal Ratzinger wrote to the US bishops to remind them that
“While the Church exhorts civil authorities to seek peace, not war, and to exercise discretion and mercy in imposing punishment on criminals, it may still be permissible to take up arms to repel an aggressor or to have recourse to capital punishment. There may be a legitimate diversity of opinion even among Catholics about waging war and applying the death penalty, but not however with regard to abortion and euthanasia.”
“But what about the living?”, liberals ask. Both the Bbile and the Catechism of the Catholic Church say to defend the innocent from the violent. (See Exodus 20:13, 21:14, Luke 3:14, 7:1-10, 23:39-43, Romans 13:4, and Catechism of the Catholic Church 2265 and 2267.)
The Code of Canon Law says that since the laity have “freedom in secular affairs…they must be on guard, in questions of opinion, against proposing their own view as the teaching of the Church.” (Canon 227)
March 27, 2008, at 4:24 pm
If, post-Vatican II, Catholics are allowed to vote for candidates not requiring Roman Catholicism to be the sole legal religion of a given nation, then surely they should also be allowed to vote for pro-choice candidates? Is salvation now less important than abortion? Or are Catholics supposed to have “freedom in secular affairs,” as Mr. Schenk’s quote from Canon Law states?
It’s entirely inconsistent to allow Catholics to vote for non-Catholic candidates but to disallow them from voting for pro-choice candidates, leading to the suspicion that the former is allowed because to do otherwise in the modern world would be practically impossible and the latter is disallowed because, well, it gets to be used as a sticking point.
March 27, 2008, at 4:33 pm
I think Obama will address abortion in talking to Catholics. You will find this excerpt from the Audacity of Hope on point:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1546298,00.html
March 27, 2008, at 6:03 pm
You are mistaken about pre- Vatican II Catholics not being “allowed” to vote for such candidates.
Catholics have never been forbidden to vote for non-Catholics. Abortion is an issue separate from whether the candidate is Catholic or not. Witness many pro-choice politicians who identify themselves as Catholics.
March 27, 2008, at 6:56 pm
How about some media coverage on the issue of infanticide???Obama is the only candidate that during his political career has been so fanatically pro-abortion that in the Illinois legislature he led the fight to kill an anti-infanticide law (to protect already born children who survived an abortion somehow—and testimony proved there had been some and they were subsequently murdered). He argued that protecting the already born might interfere with abortion “rights.”
Both Clinton and Obama are far more radical and leftist—especially on social issues—than most Catholics. But when the white Catholic vote comes up in the mass media the strong implication is that the only reason Catholics oppose Hillary is that they are sexist, or oppose Obama only because he is Black. Yet Catholic voters are very well educated and seem far more aware of the extreme leftist ideology of these two than the news media which ignorantly seems to cover nothing but the “horse race” which makes it easy to slander the Catholic vote as being merely sexist or racist.
In my large family everyone likes Condolezza Rice and Mike Steele of Maryland and would vote for either for president with enthusiasm. But the mass media will not do a swoon over these two as it is doing over Obama all the while implying that those who won’t join in the Obamamania are somehow racist.
Incidentally, I serve as deacon in an Italian Catholic parish and now see that the pastor Obama won’t cut himself off from refers to my congregants as “Garlic noses.” Looking at how Obama helped lead the crusade to get Don Imus fired for telling a very stupid joke ONCE—his sheer bottom dwelling hypocrisy at sticking with a minister who insults and degrades Italo-Americans (and Wright has made other stupid comments about Italians)) should make the idea of voting for Obama out of bounds for those who do not endorse bigotry.
March 27, 2008, at 7:22 pm
Al Wunsch wrote:
Starting off a sentence like that is a confession of prejudice. The organization is called the Democratic Party. “Democrat party” is the tag of Republican propaganda rhetoric.
March 27, 2008, at 9:33 pm
The picture, I believe, is the infamous button that pro-abortion-rights Democrats created to bash the very progressive, yet morally conservative (and pro-life) Democrat, the late Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania.
March 27, 2008, at 11:51 pm
Mark, Mark, Mark. We know you want Obama and Clinton to change and become pro-life. You have made that very clear. But this was an article that talked about abortion quite a bit.
Maybe the Democratic candidates believe what they say about abortion. After all, it’s not like Obama has not talked about abortion at length in a way that was extremely respectful of the Catholic position. Maybe this is a story about candidates and the voters in PA, and not about Democratic leaders in 1992.
When you write
you seem to be falling back into your habit of complaining about articles not because they fail to see religious ghosts, but because they fail to be different articles about subjects that you think are more interesting. The reporters wrote about religion, about how voters’ religious beliefs are impacting the way they vote, about the difficulty in distinguishing between religious motives in voting and other cultural motivations for voting, and about the role that abortion plays for Catholic voters in PA. I’d say that is pretty good for Associated Press when it comes to getting religion.
I think your complaint about this story would be like me using this story to complain about why the media does not press Catholic Republican voters on why they support a party whose platform is so at odds with a Catholic approach to public policy on any number of issues (from immigration to Iraq to race to capital punishment to the environment, etc.) That’s a pet peeve of mine, and it would be a great story. But just because a story does not address my pet peeve does not mean it fails to get religion.
March 28, 2008, at 7:55 am
AP reports Friday morning that Sen. Bob Casey Jr will endorse Sen. Obama. Some kind of reaching out does seem to be in operation.
The question of appealing to hot-button social issues is a useful one, but what does this look like precisely? In the context of Pennsylvania, what is the upside of this? Does Sen. Clinton gain anything (she already has a double digit lead)? What would happen for Sen. Obama? It may be that the listening sessions are far more strategic than some nominal show piece — Sen. Obama will need to assure the Catholic community leaders of his openness to their concerns, as witness to the Sen Casey endorsement today.
Mark’s view might have more substance if it were cross-tabbed with generational insight. Politically, do the young Catholics march to the same beat? If comparable shifts in Evangelical communities are a guide, then the answer would be no.
Lastly, if we bring up the hot-button issues, why not the other hot-button issue of the religious left: racism. The historic behavior of blue collar, ethnic communities (and often Catholic) was in mid-century well-known as seedbed of racism. See Macomb County, Michigan, home of the Reagan Democrats. Again, while this seems to be a generational issue and so in decline.