Mark Stricherz on Catholic Bosses and Values Voters

Mark Stricherz, author of Why the Democrats are Blue: Secular Liberals and the Decline of the People's Party, sat down with me yesterday to discuss his book, and why he doesn't think Barack Obama will win the vote of "values voters." Listen to our interview here.

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Tim Reidy

State of the Campaign #5: Ground Game

In addition to having a winning message, and a biography that allows viewers to envision you are president, and a strategy for winning 270 electoral college votes and the ability to bring Catholic swing voters into your column, you need to get your voters to the polls. You need a ground game, dedicated field workers who have organized precinct-by-precinct, know who plans to vote for you and a way of checking up on them come election day. In 2004, the GOP beat the Democrats on the ground but this year may be different.

The other day, I got a text message from the Obama campaign. Like many Americans, I signed up to be notified of Barack Obama’s vice-presidential pick by text message, and to sign up I had to give them my cell phone number. They let me know that Biden was the pick. They asked me to donate to the Red Cross when Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana. And, then Wednesday, I got the message: “Get info on how to vote at VoteforChange.com You can get registered, apply to vote absentee or find your polling location. Fwd msg to 5 friends!”

Sarah Palin may not know what the Bush Doctrine is but everyone knows what the Obama campaign doctrine is: organize, organize, organize. The decision to hold his convention acceptance speech at a football stadium in front of 84,000, despite the logistical nightmare (creating a plan B in case of rain, filling a stadium, distributing tickets, etc.), was made because they perceived a way to sign up volunteers. There was no charge to get into Invesco Field, but you had to provide your email and cell phone and promise to volunteer. That night, the Obama campaign added 45,000 names to its volunteer rolls. It is doubtful that John Kerry had 400 volunteers in Colorado in 2004.

The downside of the long primary for the Democrats was that it kept Obama from being able to focus entirely on the Republicans and created some bitterness in the ranks. The upside was that 36 million people voted in the Democratic primaries, an all time record. There was a ton of excitement but just as important there were hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters. Since 2006, more than 2 million new Democrats have been registered in the 28 states that tag party affiliation. In that same period, Republicans have lost 344,000 voters in those states.

According to the AP, changes in voter registration are central to Democratic confidence in some key swing states. Obama lost the Pennsylvania primary to Hillary Clinton by nine points. He has struggled with the white, ethnic, Catholic voters who prove decisive in the Keystone State. Since 2006, Democrats have added 375,000 new voters in Pennsylvania while the GOP has lost 117,000. The margin of 500,000 is more than twice as large as Kerry’s 2006 margin of victory in Pennsylvania: Kerry beat Bush by 194,000 votes.

Obama had hoped that aggressive efforts to register voters in traditionally red states like George and North Carolina could turn those states purple. This week, we learned that he is pulling staff out of Georgia: McCain’s successful convention and, even more, his choice of Sarah Palin, has strengthened his candidacy among evangelicals sufficiently that Georgia now appears out of reach for the Democrats. Virginia has become a battleground, however largely because of voter registration efforts. The Old Dominion does not register by party affiliation. But of the 202,000 new voters registered since the start of the year, 64 percent are younger than 35, a demographic that Obama should win handily. Kerry did not even contest Virginia in 2004 and Bush won the state by 262,000 votes.

You never know how your ground game does until election night. The effort to organize, register and mobilize young people has been a theme for Democrats for a long time, but no one has been able to get young people to vote in numbers commensurate with their share of the electorate. The Obama camp is using new technology and new organizing tools to get young people to the polls. If the election is as close as the polls indicate, the ground game could be the difference.

Michael Sean Winters

Dems Breathe Easy As Palin Stumbles

Maybe it was the nervous rash on her neck. Nah. It was the look on Sarah Palin's face, the admixture of existential fear with genuine puzzlement, when she realized she had absolutely no idea what Charlie Gibson was talking about when he asked her if she supported the "Bush doctrine." She did not even fudge her answer very well. It was one of the most embarrassing moments I have seen on television in some time. It brought two words to mind: Dan Quayle. Or, better, Lloyd Bentsen. You could almost hear his ghost saying, "Governor Palin, I knew Hillary Clinton. I worked with Hillary Clinton. Governor, you are no Hillary Clinton." A casual reader of any major newspaper could have answered that question, but not our would-be vice-president.

Being interviewed by a network news anchor is a nerve-wracking experience. During the clergy sex abuse crisis, I was interviewed by Peter Jennings of ABC News and it was the most bizarre experience of my life, even including Mardi Gras in New Orleans. You are in a room with a dozen people, none of whom give a whit about what you are going to say except the interviewer. The lighting guys and the make-up girl and the hyper-active producer and who knows who else are all running around. Jennings tried to put me at ease. "Michael," he intoned, "just pretend we are sitting down and having a cup of coffee and chatting." That did not help. Not sure about anybody else, but my mornings do not normally start with sitting down for some java with Peter Jennings. It did not help that I had a fever that day and would spend the next two days in bed with the flu.

Maybe Governor Palin should cancel all appearances tomorrow and announce that she is suffering from the flu. Sympathy is the best she can hope for here. All the way across D.C. tonight, you could hear the sound of palms slapping foreheads at McCain headquarters. And, if you listened closely, you could almost hear their muffled voices, "We should have gone with Romney."

Michael Sean Winters

State of the Campaign #4: Catholics

“As Catholics go, so goes America,” religion scholar and Boston College professor Alan Wolfe recently wrote (happily, in the blurb for my book!). The quintessential swing voters for the past 35 years have been white ethnic Catholics living in suburbs in the Northeast and Midwest. They were the “Reagan Democrats” who returned to the Democratic fold to vote for Bill Clinton but who deserted one of their own, John Kerry, because he appeared more in touch with his wind-surfing board than he did with the culture of his co-religionists.

Barack Obama has a "Catholic problem." In the 2008 primaries, white, ethnic Catholics backed Hillary Clinton in the primaries, sometimes overwhelmingly. In Pennsylvania, she beat Obama 70 percent to 30 percent in the primary. The McCain campaign would not be doing its job if it had failed to notice that datum. Catholics remain a decisive voting bloc in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and New Hampshire, all swing states that are toss-ups, or barely leaning one way or the other.

This year, the Catholic swing voters in the Northeast and Midwest have been joined by a new group of swing voters, the Catholic Latinos in the Southwest. Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada are all in the toss-up column. In 2004, George W. Bush garnered 44 percent of the Latino vote nationwide, a record for a GOP candidate. Currently, the most recent polls show Obama beating McCain among Latinos 70 to 30 percent. It will be impossible for McCain to win those three states unless he does better among Latinos than 30 percent. And Florida’s Latino vote is increasingly diverse as Puerto Ricans along the I-4 Corridor in Central Florida outnumber Cuban-Americans in Miami.

How to win the Catholic vote? Both parties have certain difficulties they must overcome if they are to meet with success in Catholic precincts. The GOP has become the party of social Darwinism, their economic policies are about the survival of the fittest, and they never speak about the common good except when invoking a vague, and militaristic, brand of patriotism. They remain the “pro-life” party but increasingly, many pro-life voters, especially younger pro-life voters, are questioning the value of carrying the GOP’s water: 35 years after Roe, what exactly does the pro-life movement have to show for its affiliation with the Republicans?

The Democrats are better than the GOP on social justices the church champions, but there is still an anti-religious bias that pops out. Obama’s comment about bitter, rural voters “clinging” to religion was an example. Still, Obama has gone far to end the days when pro-choice meant pro-abortion by supporting policies aimed at preventing unwanted pregnancies in the first place and providing a social safety net to women who nonetheless find themselves facing a crisis pregnancy. And, he has reached out to religiously motivated voters in ways no Democrat has before. The fact that Doug Kmiec, a long-time conservative, pro-life legal scholar and Reagan appointee, has endorsed Obama tells you that the Democrats’ changes are making a difference.

For many white, ethnic Catholics Obama’s race remains a hurdle. The neighborhoods that were disrupted by bussing in the 1970s were often ethnic Catholic neighborhoods, and the experience spawned a great deal of racial animosity. As well, McCain’s heroism during the Vietnam War struck a chord with ethnic Catholics who supported that war and resented those who opposed it. More generally, the military was the means by which many Catholic families entered the mainstream of American culture: a grandfather or uncle served in World War II or Korea or Vietnam or the first Gulf War, and that experience stamped them as finally belonging, transcending their roots, becoming Americans. There is a reason John McCain’s military biography figured more prominently than his legislative history at the GOP convention.

For Latinos, the number one issue is immigration reform. In 2006, Latinos organized massive protest rallies that were frequently addressed by Catholic prelates. The rallies were used to do political organizing as well, and in the fall elections that year, Latinos were decisive in turning out anti-immigrant GOP congressmen in several districts, including two congressional seats in McCain home state of Arizona. In Iowa and Kansas, Catholic bishops have been on the front lines protesting government immigration raids. In Rhode Island, the Bishop of Providence has written to the Homeland Security Department protesting the raids.

There was a time when John McCain favored comprehensive and humane immigration reform that would require undocumented workers to pay a fine and move to the end of the line, but nonetheless put them on a path to citizenship. But, in order to secure the Republican nomination, McCain had to abandon that position and support more draconian measures and a border-security-first approach to the issue. (Building a fence will not do much to actually solve the problem: Many undocumented workers enter the country legally on tourist visas and simply overstay their allotted time.) Latinos once considered McCain a champion, and a lonely one in the GOP. Now, he more resembles Judas. The Democrats have so far failed to fully capitalize on the McCain camp’s forfeiture of the Latino vote by embracing a family-first immigration reform agenda, although Obama did mention the need to keep families together in his acceptance speech in Denver.

So, the Catholic vote may prove decisive and it is not at all clear yet who will win it. That guarantees one thing: a fascinating race.

Michael Sean Winters

The Big Mo'

In politics, as in sports, momentum, that invisible, unquantifiable, yet powerful force produced from a succession of wins can make or break a campaign. That’s why George H.W. Bush called it the “Big Mo’”. But how does a candidate gain momentum? Well, he (or she) has to figure out what the voters want in a given election, position himself as the only person who can really deliver it, and then convey that message successfully in every news cycle, by making prudent and inventive choices, advertisements, speeches etc., until voters are convinced that he really is the person that he says he is. Sounds simple, right? Well, in a certain sense, it is. But simple things are frequently the easiest things to mess up, precisely because we all can’t really believe that something so seemingly complicated could actually be so simple.

Professionals, however--those who’ve been through a few campaigns--do understand this. That’s why at the 1992 Clinton campaign headquarters, James Carville, one of Clinton’s top strategists, placed a sign on the wall that read:

Remember:
1. Change vs. more of the same.
2. The economy, stupid.
3. Don't forget health care.

This was Carville’s recipe for momentum and, with a savvy communications team who won more news cycles than they lost, as well as a little help from Ross Perot, Clinton won the 1992 election. But what’s the recipe for 2008? With a tip of the hat to Mr. Carville, here goes:

1. Change vs. more of the same
2. The economy, stupid
3. Don't forget the war.

The 2008 election is about the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but primarily it is about which candidate can really deliver change. Obama has known that from Day 1, as they say, and that’s largely why he won his party’s nomination, by consistently presenting himself as the true agent of change who can give Americans this thing they so desperately want. He has now, however, clearly lost some momentum and it may very well be because in making one of his most important choices he forgot the first and most important ingredient in the recipe. In picking Joe Biden as his running mate, Obama picked a capable, talented and knowledgeable politician. But after 35 years in Washington, D.C. and two failed presidential runs, the first one twenty years ago, Joe Biden does not really say “change.”

When Obama picked Biden, McCain saw an opportunity and seized it. What was the opportunity? To position himself as the change agent by making an unconventional choice for his running mate. That he did, and the momentum has shifted to McCain accordingly. McCain has been winning the daily news cycle everyday since the Palin announcement. The momentum can shift again, and it probably will, but there is one thing both candidates know very well: John McCain had several months to capture the momentum from Obama. Obama has just a little over 50 days.

Matt Malone, S.J.

Bishops, Biden and Abortion

The Administrative Committee of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference has issued a statement on the recent comments by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senator Joseph Biden regarding the Church’s teaching on abortion. The statement is balanced but strong, as were the previous statements issued jointly by Cardinal Justin Rigali, head of the Pro-Life Committee, and Bishop William Lori, chair of the Doctrine Committee. It points out that both Pelosi and Biden misrepresented the Church’s teachings in their statements on "Meet The Press." It says that they were wrong and it says so forcefully. But, it does not get into the ugly and uncharitable business of demonizing anyone.

This is important because the bishops need to look at the two parties’ platforms and see which has the greater prospect of reducing the number of abortions. The GOP calls for overturning Roe which would punt the issue back to the states. Most states would codify Roe, perhaps with greater restrictions on late-term abortions, but most abortions do not occur late in the term and most abortions do not occur in the more conservative states that would enact restrictions. The GOP specifically declined to endorse a common ground approach to reducing the number of abortions. They removed the following line from their platform: "We invite all persons of good will, whether across the political aisle or within our party, to work together to reduce the incidence of abortion." Why did they remove those words?

The Democrats did add that language, and pledged support for efforts to provide pre- and post-natal care for pregnant women, to achieve universal health insurance so that women can afford to go to a hospital, and other programs that would make it easier for women to make the choice to carry a child to term. Let’s be honest: Most abortions in America are procured by women who do not think they can afford a pregnancy. The Democrats, while not backing down on their support for Roe, embrace a program that shows greater promise of actually reducing the number of abortions. I think they are wrong about Roe and I want our bishops to call them out on that fact. But, the bishops cannot say any longer that one party is pro-life and the other is pro-abortion.

There is one problem with the bishops’ statement. They want to show that this issue is not strictly speaking confessional in nature, that it is not dependent upon revealed religion but, instead, is based on natural law. In fact, as Rocco Palmo reports, the bishops changed some of the language of the text to show that their argument is not based on Church teaching. But, not everyone in America believes in natural law theory, so while I understand that the bishops do not want abortion to be seen as a "Catholic issue" I think they have to be better prepared for a different kind of argument, and one they must conduct without recourse to their apostolic authority, if they pursue the natural law argument.

For example, the bishops’ statement reads: "The first is a biological question: When does a new human life begin? When is there a new living organism of the human species, distinct from mother and father and ready to develop and mature if given a nurturing environment? While ancient thinkers had little verifiable knowledge to help them answer this question, today embryology textbooks confirm that a new human life begins at conception. The Catholic Church does not teach this as a matter of faith; it acknowledges it as a matter of objective fact."

Yes, those embryology textbooks will show that human life is present from conception onwards. The zygote or colony of cells is undeniably alive and not dead. And, it is undeniably human – it is not an acorn and will not grow into an oak tree. But, it is not yet an individual human person because twinning is possible up until day fifteen or sixteen after conception. Should the zygote deserve legal protection before it is an individual human person? I believe so, and the bishops believe so, but there is no scientific argument one way or the other, and the American constitutional tradition only recognizes the existence of rights that inhere in individuals. Besides, NARAL and NOW can hire scientists too, so I do not think the bishops have found a winning argument.

I have never been a fan of natural law reasoning, and an argument based upon it certainly robs the bishops of their authority when they speak to Pelosi and Biden as pastors: as Cardinal William Levada demonstrated in his doctoral dissertation, a natural law argument cannot, by definition, be issued on the authority of the Church’s magisterium because it is not contingent upon revealed truth. Aristotle was not a Thomist although Thomists are Aristotelians.

The bishops argument would be more persuasive to my Catholics ears if they invoked the Imago Dei. No matter how many scientists NARAL finds, none of them can dispute the truths about the human person that we find in Genesis and the Psalms and in the Incarnation of our Lord. Those truths changed the world. Abortion is violence against a child of God, or children of God, it doesn’t matter if it is day one or day twenty after conception. Until the bishops appear more in love with their fellow men, especially those who err, they will fail to create the culture of life which is the only way to end the evil of abortion.

Michael Sean Winters

Welcome Tom Rosshirt

America's election blog is pleased to welcome Tom Rosshirt as a contributor. His first post is below. Tom was a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and is a partner at West Wing Writers, a communications and strategy firm located in Washington, D.C. He and his family worship at Holy Trinity Church in Washington, D.C.