In the Wall Street Journal, Steven Waldman explains “something stunning: traditional white Catholics went for Obama-Biden in record numbers”:
How did a pro-choice, pro-gay rights, Protestant make such inroads? Prof. [John] Green suggests that the first reason is the economy. These traditional Catholics voted for Obama despite his liberal views on social issues.
Mark Silk of Trinity College offers a different theory—that these results reflect less Obama’s strength than John Kerry’s weakness. Sen. Kerry was battered by bishops for being pro-choice but also for, in effect, being a bad Catholic.
At Spiritual Politics, Mark Silk provides a more detailed response:
Let me offer, instead, the hypothesis that the swing towards Obama among Traditionalist Catholics had less to do with the circumstances of the 2008 election than with their antipathy to voting for a pro-choice Catholic in 2004. In fact, this voting bloc swung heavily away from the Democratic candidate (to the tune of 17 points) between 2000 and 2004. So in November they more or less reverted to their 2000 voting pattern.
If I’m right and Traditionalist Catholics have more of a problem voting for a pro-choice Catholic than a pro-choice non-Catholic, that’s both good and bad news for conservative Catholic hierarchs and intellectuals.
Read the full Wall Street Journal article here and Silk’s full post here, and visit First Things for Nathaniel Peters’ take on the article.