There are, no doubt, many casualties in the American
body politic as the country is torn apart by divisive and ideological politics.
As a Catholic priest, parishioners confide in me
about some of their mental anguish caused by divisive politics. The most common
problem I have heard in the present election cycle, similar to the recent past
but now more intense, is the anguish in the minds of blue collar, working-class
Catholics. All of their adult lives they have been loyal Democrats, and speak
with joy and pride about the Democratic Party of the past: about Kennedy
especially, but also about LBJ and Humphrey. They do not speak with pride about
leaders such as McGovern, McCarthy, Carter, Gore, or Kerry. Some of them
mention Bill Clinton with mixed feelings. But what they now feel is the mental
pain of being caught between their sense of loyalty to the Democratic Party and
their strong disagreement with a number of prominent policies now embraced by
their party. These working-class Catholics feel dispossessed by a party that
favors “abortion rights,” “gay rights,” “extreme environmentalism,” “climate
control,” and so on. These are probably the four issues about which they
express disagreement most often. But they clearly cannot identify with national
Democratic leaders, either. In brief, they embrace the politics of the
Democratic Party of the New Deal to the Great Society, but surely want nothing
to do with the beliefs and policies of leaders such as Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi,
and Barrack Obama. For these men, their sense of betrayal by the Democratic
Party is not based on racial or gender prejudice, and to interpret it that way
would be unjust.
What surfaces among Catholic Democrats is a clear
split in the Democratic Party between older and middle-aged working class men
and women and a more socially liberal element of the Party dominant in large
urban areas, especially in greater New York and California. These Catholic
Democrats express respect or affection for none of the national Democratic
figures; on the contrary, they speak of them with disdain and disgust, in terms
similar to those used by more avowedly conservative Catholics.
To some extent, one finds a similar split among
Republicans: between more rural and small-town Republicans in the south,
midwest, and west, and the more “monied Republicans” of the Northeast (the group
sometimes called “country-club Republicans”). But to the present I have not
heard Republican Catholics speak with anything like the anguish of working-class
Democrats, who speak in private with passion and anger at the Party that they
believe has betrayed its principles, and surely left them alienated. These
working class Catholic Democrats are clearly a casualty of contemporary politics
in the USA.
