Can Catholics save the Democrats?

Can Catholics save the Democrats? Only if Democrats first admit they need savings.

THE four candidates running the Democratic National Committee looks like technocrats trying to figure out why a computer program doesn’t work. Russell Berman at The Atlantic argues that Democrats didn’t really do such bad things: Trump’s popular vote margin shrank to 1.5% and they gained a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

It’s time to face reality. A convicted felon beat the sitting vice president. Over the past four weeks, the National Catholic Reporter has published my autopsy essays on my election defeat. I have examined the need for Democrats, and the cultural left in general, to stop heresy hunt; end their dependence on scientism and accreditation; regain a feeling of history, humility and humor; and recover the coat of economic populism who built the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

The Democrats have been warned. The book by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira Where have all the Democrats gone: the soul of the party in the age of extremes (revised here And here) analyzed how Democrats had hemorrhaged white working-class voters in previous decades by combining neoliberal economic policies and extremist approaches to cultural values. They concluded: “America needs a Democratic Party that is liberal on economic issues and moderate or conciliatory on cultural issues. »

Book by cultural sociologist James Davison Hunter Democracy and solidarity: on the cultural roots of the American political crisis (revised here And here) made a similar warning from a different angle. Among Hunter’s many insightful ideas, he observed: “The institutional bearer of progressive politics has shifted from unions to universities, and its primary advocates have shifted from working-class liberals and socialists to college students, faculty, and administrators.” middle and upper classes. “.

Apparently no one at the DNC or in the Biden or Harris campaigns bothered to read either book, or if they did, they did so defensively. Furthermore, the donor class was not interested and the young people working on the campaigns were the product of the new politics of the teachers’ lounge.

So we return to the big question: can Catholics save Democrats? This is not a new question. I wrote a book about this in 2008: Left at the Altar: How Democrats Lost Catholics and How Catholics Can Save Democrats. There was then an overlap in my diagnosis with the assessments of Judis, Teixeira and Hunter this year. But Catholic social teaching contains a moral imperative that more secular diagnoses lack: the Gospel requires us to stand with the marginalized and be at least wary of the rich and powerful. In 2024, it has become painfully obvious that Democrats are now the party of the wealthy and privileged, and that is no place for a Christian.

Democrats have talked a lot about the marginalized. They presented themselves as allies of Black Americans, Latino Americans, LGBT Americans and Native Americans. Trump realized, however, that professors and MSNBC talking heads speaking on behalf of these groups often speak in ways that the people they claim to represent find unintelligible or offensive.

A classic example is the word “Latinx,” designed to overcome the binary fact that Spanish is a gendered language. “Latinx” offered a non-binary alternative, thereby signaling an acceptance of contemporary gender ideology. The problem was that most Latinos either didn’t use it or didn’t like it. A 2020 Bench study found that only a quarter of Latinos had heard of it and only 3% used it.

In 2021, Arizona Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego said he had banned his staff from using the term: tweet“When Latino politicians use the term, it’s largely to appease wealthy white progressives who think it’s a term we use.” Gallego is now Senator-elect Gallego, and his counting of votes was 7 points ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris in Arizona.

So, Catholics, do you want to side with those who claim to speak for the marginalized, or do you want to actually identify with the marginalized?

What’s more, Catholic social teaching provides a set of morally consistent ideas and beliefs that would help Democrats adopt more liberal economic policies and avoid more extreme cultural policies. Pope Francis said famous that the neoliberal economy is “an economy that kills”.

The pope also made it clear that Christians cannot harbor animosity toward anyone and that the Church must welcome everyone. He is known for housing transgender sex workers.

But he also condemned gender ideology. Welcoming someone does not require adhering to their ideology. The Democrats’ problem on the transgender issue wasn’t really about transgender people. The same is true with how academics and others demand that people discuss, or not discuss, issues surrounding transgender ideology.

Democrats will never accept the pope’s staunch opposition to abortion, but they might recognize that such a morally serious person should have all of his moral convictions respected, even if they may not be shared. Nor could we in America adopt the full understanding of Catholic social teaching on how an economy should operate. But we could move in that direction. Same for just war theory.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. There is no problem in American political life that is not resolved by an encounter with Catholic social teaching.

The ability of Catholic thinkers to help Democrats, however, is even more fundamental.

Hunter noted, “Most Americans still believe in God or a higher power, but our public culture is overwhelmingly and aggressively secular. » The absence of a shared national myth is at the origin of our cultural polarization.

The Catholic Church before the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965 may not be of much help in constructing a national myth broad enough to gain the support of most Americans. But 60 years of interreligious dialogue since the closing of Vatican II have given at least some Catholic thinkers the ability to engage with those with different theological and ideological starting points and build common understanding.

Here are the essential ingredients for a Democratic party to win national elections:

• Articulate economic populism that appeals to voters and craft policies that will improve the economic prospects of the American working class.
• Moderate his harsh and academic approach to cultural issues.
• And help shape a national narrative broad enough to embrace the hopes of all Americans.

They need all three.

The question remains: Can Democrats bring themselves to actually change?