ALL THE DEMOCRATS WOULD HAVE TO DO...:

The Democrats’ Lost Tribe: An author argues that without support from Catholics, the Democrats won't win the presidency. But how to lure them back? (Roger Lowenstein September 2008, Folio)

Michael Sean Winters has a name for Democrats who have abandoned their party in recent years: Catholics.

In Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats, Winters, a columnist for the Catholic World, argues that the Democrats discovered how to win presidential elections only when, in the 1930s, they formed a left-center alli­ance with working-class Catholics. This lasted half a century, until Catholic voters deserted Jimmy Carter in 1980. The party would lose five of the next seven elections, and in 2004, Senator John Kerry would fail to carry the Catholic vote. If that does not sound astonishing, imagine Senator Barack Obama losing the black vote. “How did the Demo­crats lose the Catholics?” a bishop asked Winters. He attempts to answer this very question.

...is forcibly resettle Catholics back in major cities and they'd get that support back. Once Catholics stopped being dependent on urban political patronage it was all over. That is, likewise, why Democrats have a vested interest in keeping blacks in ghettoes with bad schools.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2008 8:26 AM