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JFK Gives Social Permission to Leave the Democratic Party
Pennsylvania is not embracing VP Kamala Harris. Her progressive persona seems to be rubbing residents of Scranton the wrong way.
Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer appeared last week in a video that could be viewed as an attempt to help the Trump/Vance campaign. The Governor placed a Dorito chip on the tongue of a social-media influencer who (only) looks like she is kneeling. Unamused, Michigan’s bishops denounced the clip as “specifically imitating the posture and gestures of Catholics receiving the Holy Eucharist.” Governor Whitmer apologized.
What’s that to do with Kamala Harris, you ask? Well, here’s the kicker, reports the WSJ’s William McGurn, Gretchen Witmer was wearing a Harris-Walz campaign hat in the video.
Clueless in Michigan
How out of touch can Democrat elites be? Ms. Whitmer feigned surprise that there were others who would take offense. Her peccadillo or whatever you want to call it upset some voters? Really? Here’s why things start to get interesting: 30% of Pennsylvania’s voters are Catholic.
Polling by Real Clear Politics shows the separation between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in seven battleground states is less than half a point average, close to dead even.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which protects religious liberty, recently released a statement from Kristen Waggoner, CEO of ADF:
Throughout her career as a public official, Kamala Harris has long used government power to try to coerce people of faith to violate their consciences, especially regarding abortion and gender ideology.
As California’s attorney general, Ms. Harris signed several friend-of-the-court briefs opposing religious exemptions for private employers such as Hobby Lobby and religious nonprofits such as the Little Sisters of the Poor. Kamala Harris boasts about co-sponsoring California’s Reproductive FACT Act, which compelled pro-life pregnancy centers to display notices about where women could get an abortion.
The Supreme Court in 2018 rejected the law as a likely violation of the First Amendment.
Treating Knights of Columbus Like the Ku Klux Klan
But perhaps Ms. Harris’s most notorious Catholic moment came after she was elected senator, continues McGurn.
When Brian Buescher was nominated for a federal judgeship, she grilled him about his membership in the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic men’s fraternal organization. Although President John F. Kennedy was also a Knight, Ms. Harris treated the group as though it were the Ku Klux Klan.
Later, she sponsored the Equality Act, which the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops said could/would force doctors and hospitals to perform abortions they oppose. This happened about the same time she snubbed New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Harris declined to attend Thursday’s “Al Smith dinner.” The dinner has been an election-year staple for decades, noted for bringing Democratic and Republican candidates together in a civil setting.
How Joe Biden Flipped and Won PA
President Joe Biden was often at a crossroads with the Catholic Church on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage. Growing up in Scranton, PA, gave Joe roots and familiarity with the culture, helping him to overcome criticisms and win over Catholic votes (50-49%).
Today’s landscape is shaping up to look more like the 2016 race than it did in 2020.
A Pew survey finds Ms. Harris trailing Mr. Trump among Catholics nationwide by 5 points, 47% to 52%. That’s puts Ms. Harris in Mrs. Clinton’s territory (Hillary lost PA in 2016).
Is Joe Biden the last of the big-time Democrats whose base was the white working class? Maybe, and if so, it points to a sensibility that Kamala. Harris is conspicuously lacking.
Not to be forgotten was the Obama administration’s debating the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Obama pushed internally for a broader religious exemption, but Joe Biden warned Obama not to jeopardize his re-election prospects by “alienating working-class Catholics in swing states,” such as Pennsylvania. Obama ignored the warning and won anyway.
CatholicVote, a group that promotes Catholic values in public life, is highlighting this dissonance. In addition to the usual ads, mailings and social-media posts, this Thursday it is hosting a conversation with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Kennedy is no one’s idea of a staunch Catholic—but on abortion, for example, he departs from Democrat/Catholic orthodoxy by talking about help for pregnant woman who want to keep their babies as much as those who want an abortion.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. aims to influence voters to follow his example: leave the Democratic Party and vote Republican.
Kennedy deviates from Democratic orthodoxy by talking about help for pregnant woman, especially (those who decide to keep their babies) as much as those who want to abort their babies.. He offers skeptical Democrats social permission to follow his example.
From Brian Burch, president of CatholicVote.
“Many Catholics in Pennsylvania are Democrats by tradition who might have voted for Joe Biden but have grown increasingly skeptical about their party under Kamala Harris.”
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