{"id":37,"date":"2008-04-29T13:23:44","date_gmt":"2008-04-29T13:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html"},"modified":"2008-04-29T13:23:44","modified_gmt":"2008-04-29T13:23:44","slug":"deal-does-catholicism-have-any","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html","title":{"rendered":"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Deal,<br \/>\nThank you for your thoughtful <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/castingstones\/2008\/04\/clinton-and-obama-among-cathol.html?bt=polmashup\">unpacking of the Catholic question. <\/a><br \/>\nThe most persuasive explanation of why Hillary would be doing better than Obama among Catholics is that she \u201cinherits much of the Catholic goodwill bestowed upon her husband.\u201d<br \/>\nWhat I\u2019m still confused about is this: all of the <em>issues<\/em> cited by Ray Flynn and others (health care, children, families) can just as easily be ascribed to Obama.  If it\u2019s really simply that they&#8217;rer more familiar with her track record, well, that would seem to be a surmountable problem for Obama over time.<br \/>\nHere\u2019s my theory: in the Democratic primaries, the Catholic vote has nothing to do with Catholicism.  It\u2019s not about abortion, it\u2019s not about social justice.  As you point out, Democratic Party catholics tend to be less mass-attending than the Catholic population as a whole.  When all the dust settles and the numbers are fully crunched, it will turn out that other factors were the tale that wagged the Catholic vote.  It may be that Hillary just runs strong among working class, rust belters, and that in Pennsylvania and Ohio, working class high school grads tend to be more Catholic.<br \/>\nWaddya think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deal, Thank you for your thoughtful unpacking of the Catholic question. The most persuasive explanation of why Hillary would be doing better than Obama among Catholics is that she \u201cinherits much of the Catholic goodwill bestowed upon her husband.\u201d What I\u2019m still confused about is this: all of the issues cited by Ray Flynn and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote? - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Deal, Thank you for your thoughtful unpacking of the Catholic question. The most persuasive explanation of why Hillary would be doing better than Obama among Catholics is that she \u201cinherits much of the Catholic goodwill bestowed upon her husband.\u201d What I\u2019m still confused about is this: all of the issues cited by Ray Flynn and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-04-29T13:23:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote? - Steven Waldman","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote? - Steven Waldman","og_description":"Deal, Thank you for your thoughtful unpacking of the Catholic question. The most persuasive explanation of why Hillary would be doing better than Obama among Catholics is that she \u201cinherits much of the Catholic goodwill bestowed upon her husband.\u201d What I\u2019m still confused about is this: all of the issues cited by Ray Flynn and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2008-04-29T13:23:44+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html","name":"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-04-29T13:23:44+00:00","dateModified":"2008-04-29T13:23:44+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2008\/04\/deal-does-catholicism-have-any.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Deal, Does Catholicism Have Anything to Do With the Catholic Vote?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}