No More Critical Mass

Another of the totally-predictable bits of "Wednesday morning quarterbacking" following on the election is the observation that the much-discussed "Catholic vote" didn't make a whit of difference as to who won. The Catholics are now being described as "swing voters" which is a euphemism for "irrelevant", i.e. just another group that, by and large, votes on impulse rather than on principal. Personally, I think it's time to put this "Catholic voter" concept to bed once and for all, and, yes, it's highly regrettable but nonetheless true -- Catholics trudge off the the polls and vote for the same people, and for the same disreputable reasons, as everybody else. When you do a multivariate analysis of voting patterns, you find that the variable called "Catholic" makes no difference, i.e. is not significantly different from "random". Now, closer analysis might reveal a small remnant of hold-outs who put abortion at the top of their list of considerations -- as urged by some (but not even all) of their bishops. These would be the ones characterized as "traditional", "large family", "home schooling" ('cause the parochial schools are much too mushy-liberal), "regular churchgoers" (which is another way of saying they actually attend Mass on the Sabbath and take it seriously)... and even "Latin Mass". But some of those might have been seriously drawn off by candidates like Baldwin or Ron Paul (as a last-stand write-in), even though the rest probably voted for McCain. In any case, they are too small a group to show up on political radar. The bulk of Catholics vote not according to "life principles" but by family and cultural habit -- you know, that old strong urban core of white ethnic working-class Catholics who considered the Democratic Party their friend and ally back in the day, but who have been sorely misused and abused by the Democrats more recently -- not that their treatment by the Republicans has been much better. The pundits and pollsters persist in seeing Catholics as a "bloc" the way blacks and Evangelicals really are... but that really is a thing of the past and I wish they'd stop yacking about it, it really is just too depressing.