Obama's Catholic Crisis: The Spin Doctors Speak

As with most analysts who cover the 2008 election I receive my share of spin-related e-mails (referred to from here on in as “Spreemails”) from the campaigns of those running for high office.

A Spreemail may be described thusly: a political infomercial directed exclusively at pundits in hopes of getting these clueless dimwits to tow a presidential aspirant’s party line in their forthcoming blogs, columns, radio shows, web videos, mixed media installations, etc. In an effort to quell the inveterate suspicions of aforesaid pundits, a Spreemail will often, but not always, contain references to credible journalistic and scholarly sources.

Let me be frank: I have a soft spot for Spreemails. They suffuse me with feelings of importance and self-esteem. The only thing I fancy more than a good Spreemail is the (very rare) Direct Invitation From A Campaign Operative “to go out someday and have a beer.” I bet I could order some ‘wings too, if I asked politely. But I am divigating.

As much as I adore receiving talking points to work into my bi-weekly posts, I am usually impervious to their desired effects. Case in point: On a Saturday in March I was sent a Spreemail from the Obama folks about a speech (or more appropriately, a sermon) that the Senator had just given at the University of Texas Brownsville.

The tranquility of my Sabbath non-observance having been interrupted by this most fascinating and unsolicited transmission, I proceeded to write my “Huckobama” column (now translated into 16 languages including SwitzerDeutsch). Not only did that post make me 268 new admirers (see my comments section) but it also rendered me vulnerable to the charge of having made the whole thing up!

For the address I was citing was posted nowhere on the internet, just in the Spreemail. That’s what so great about Spreemails!

Over the past few weeks my inbox has received its fair share of messages from the Clinton and Obama campaigns with subject headings like: “Catholic League--Kudos to Hillary Clinton: Bush Should Boycott Olympic Opening”: “Beliefnet: Democratic Battle for Catholics Intensifies”: “Catholics for Obama Launch National Advisory Council”: “Obama Statement Pending the Arrival of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI”.

I read these carefully because the Spreemails never lie. Check that: they always lie in the sense of giving one a full and balanced picture. But they tell the truth about a campaign’s hopes and fears. In retrospect it is clear that both had identified Catholics as a battleground constituency weeks before the Pennsylvania primary.

Watching the returns on Tuesday night I was privy to a slice of Spreemail life that I regret having witnessed. At 8:24 pm the Obama people sent out: “BREAKING: Obama Overperforms Among Catholics and Wins Protestants.” That claim was somewhat difficult to reconcile with the note I received at 9:28 from the opposing camp: “FYI: PA Religious Exit Polling - Clinton wins Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Voters.” This was followed at 10:38 by the rather un-Christian “FYI: Dallas Morning News Religion Blog: "Hillary Clinton whups [Barack Obama in the Largest Categories]"

Leaving the claims about Protestants aside for now, let me confirm that Clinton did in fact carry Catholics by a bruising 68% to 32%. This statistic is lending credence to a growing chorus of analysts who say Obama has a problem with this constituency.

We will, undoubtedly, be discussing this at length in coming weeks. Permit me to briefly float one explanation for this state of affairs. I wish to claim--and I stress this is a first-go hypothesis--that Obama fares poorly among Catholics for the same reason that Huckabee did. Namely, these Americans are put off by Protestant presidential candidates who go too heavy on the Faith and Values stuff.

Admittedly, my hypothesis runs into difficulties when we recall that Catholics gave the majority of their votes to George W. Bush in 2004. Then again, strange as it may sound, Bush’s rhetoric was rarely as relentlessly Christ-y as that of Huck and Obama. Only with the help of continued study and further Spreemails will I be able to refine this theory in the next few posts.

For more information about religion and the candidates check out Faith 2008 by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs.

By Jacques Berlinerblau |  April 24, 2008; 7:41 AM ET Save & Share:                 
Previous: Catholics, Evangelicals and Obama | Next: Speaking Up for Women

Comments

Please report offensive comments below.

any CATHOLIC who worship the pope and statutes
will go straight to hell in the lords words
he said do not worship idles statutes only worship are heavenly father and I know for a fact that all catholic are racist people !

Posted by: dvdpt | May 4, 2008 8:03 PM
Report Offensive Comment

do you believe that the majority of catholics voted for person who believed in sodom sex,late term abortion,same sex marriages,child rape help me to understand please.

Posted by: johnnie m stallings | April 27, 2008 10:30 AM
Report Offensive Comment

It's been a while since I was one, but in my experience observant, church-going Catholics vote almost exclusively Republican. They are cultural, police-state consevatives who hate the "different."

As with all religion, we should hate the superstition, but love the superstitious.

Posted by: Cletus | April 27, 2008 10:07 AM
Report Offensive Comment

I am an Obama supporter. I fully recognize that my candidate is going to have a problem with Catholics. He's also going to have a problem with white women, elderly whites and blacks, republicans, and white supremists.

All that aside I still need a change from the status quo. Hillary Clinton seemingly couldn't control her marriage the entire time Bill Clinton was a public official. I don't feel that's she's anymore knowledgeable about international law than her counter-part who has the degree in it. If Obama doesn't beat Clinton I, who am African American, will be voting for McCain. I do that with a certain amount of fear because I think McCain's been sedated because he's not the same man he was four years ago.

And for all of you who really profess to be religious listen to Dr. Wright's entire message. What you'll find is that he doesn't hate America, just some of it's tactics. If you're still of the same persuasion after listening to the ENTIRE sermon perhaps you'll recognize that you have trouble looking at yourself in the mirror.

Posted by: Linzy | April 27, 2008 10:05 AM
Report Offensive Comment

CANDIDE: Catholics run many selfless charities too; literally thousands of Catholics feel called to offer their lives in selfless service to others. Take off your prejudiced blinkers once in a while and look around, then you will see. There is none so blind as one who will not see...

Posted by: Anonymous | April 26, 2008 8:42 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Once the outrage of Catholics is over, once they start thinking penitentially about themselves and their friends and relatives, the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, the rest -- they begin to recognize in the Pennsylvania Catholic electorate their friends and relatives and neighbors.

Posted by: candide | April 26, 2008 1:01 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Once the outrage of Catholics is over, once they start thinking penitentially about themselves and their friends and relatives, the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, the rest -- they begin to recognize in the Pennsylvania Catholic electorate their friends and relatives and neighbors.

Posted by: candide | April 26, 2008 1:01 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The hierarchical, priestly part of the Catholic Church seems remarkably free of racial prejudice.

Not so, however, for the Catholic masses in the U.S.

Barack's "Catholic problem" is very simply a prejudice-against-blacks problem, which is essentially unalterable.

Posted by: Observer | April 26, 2008 12:41 PM
Report Offensive Comment

I did not see 268 new admirers from the column cited.

I post comments to this columist's work and I do not count myself as an admirer. In fact, I like to post to columns not for the columnist's eyes but for those reading comments. It's a tricky calculus to determine if a large number of fellow, competing posts means more reads for my post or if my post just gets lost in a long list.

Barack is unelectable, even George Mitchell flamed at the hatred of white people. A lot of Republicans and Democrats care about hate and racism, but a lot of regular voters won't vote for black American yet.

Barack suffers from the same problem as Powell and Rice -- he has no real base because to develop a real base means to become the lightingrod for white hate that Jackson and Sharpton have become. You may think you want a black person like Barack or Tiger Woods in charge of things, but that is your mistake. White America would be better off with someone like Jackson or Sharpton because at least these leaders know something about the realities of racical hatred and America. Powell, Rice, Gonzalez, Pelosi, and Bush have all shown that weakness in politicians leaves the military in charge.

Posted by: Kacoo | April 26, 2008 12:28 PM
Report Offensive Comment

CANDIDE: Catholics run some top class educational institutions. Catholics are educated in it too. Too bad that your opinion of Catholics is based on the type of people you probably have had the opportunity to meet.

Posted by: Anonymous | April 26, 2008 7:11 AM
Report Offensive Comment

IJane, what a bigoted thing to say. First off, that act was a way for the right to make all abortions illegal in that state, and he was not falling for it.

I want a link proving that he made that statement also..that the mother was going to abort anyway. Proof is easy online... you can find anything. Cite.

Other then that, he has as much right to hold his views as I do, or you do. That is what democracy is.

terra

Posted by: Terra Gazelle | April 25, 2008 11:23 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Benedicta,
Can I have a link on that? Shame on yuou for lieing. Have you heard none of Obama's speaches? Did you watch the Forum on Compassion? He talked about his views on abortion. He is not pro abortion. He is respectful of the woman and the hard horrible choice that has to be made at times. He is also not for late term abortions..and believes we must make abortion rarely needed but always safe.

Of cource there is a history of this country where women went to back alleyes and ended up dead from a butchers hand and dirty tools. You call yourself pro life, that is not how I see you. I remember well the pre R v W days. I remember young women that committed suicide. No not pro life...

terra

Posted by: Terra Gazelle | April 25, 2008 11:14 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Who did this survey? Why? How? Are they talking about people only baptized? Born of Catholic parents? Lapsed Catholics? Regular adhering Church goers? Many have tried to paint Catholics as some type of foreign controlled cabal, is this more of the same mischief? Is it correct to slice and dice society this way? Why not Baptists, Unitarians, Seventh Day Adventists, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Atheists, Buddists, etc.? I question the legitimacy and validity of the survey.
Obama spoke against the Iraq war in a society hell bent to endorse it. Obama also worked with the Catholic Church in the south side of Chicago to help struggling people.

Posted by: lescaine | April 25, 2008 3:49 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Making comments like small towns, religions and guns explains things didn't help Obama any. Philly residents probably think of themselves as being small town types.

Let's face the facts. Obama did not kneel before the dead pope while the would be first man Bill Clinton did. The fact that Irish/Italian areas of Boston are the most segregated places in the country had absolutely nothing to do with the "God" vote in Pennsylvania.

Paganplace, not all Irish are Catholic. Thus the second most popular word in Ireland is "protestant." And there are still a few that call on the gods when the cold wind blows hard ;)

Posted by: BGone | April 25, 2008 3:29 PM
Report Offensive Comment

I wish to claim--and I stress this is a first-go hypothesis--that Obama fares poorly among Catholics for the same reason that Huckabee did. Namely, these Americans are put off by Protestant presidential candidates who go too heavy on the Faith and Values stuff. (Berlinerblau wrote)

My feeling is that the author got it backward. the Catholic church is 'too heavy on the Faith and values stuff' which explains preference of Clinton over Obama in Pa...I emphasize the social/cultural values. I still remember the struggle the Church had when the college of cardinals almost nominated an African to be the Pope.

Catholics like the Kennedys keep the Church in today's America appealing to some of the faithful.

Posted by: center | April 25, 2008 2:22 PM
Report Offensive Comment

If Obama had white skin the media would be reporting that he lost the Catholic vote because of the BAIPA Act that was signed into law in 2002. This is the act that protects babies who have the misfortune of being born during botched late term abortions. Prior to BAIPA these babies were denied medical care and left to die on utility shelves or in wastebaskets. While every single senator at the federal level agreed that a mother's right to choose ends with the birth of her baby, Senator Obama, a state senator at the time, was the only person to disagree and would not allow BAIPA to be passed at the state level. His argument was that it wasn't right to burden a mother with a child that she intended to abort in the first place. He fought BAIPA in 2002, 03, 04 and it finally passed in Illinois in 2005 only after Senator Obama left the state to join the federal senate. Actually, his extreme views on this has cost him a lot more then the Catholic voters but also it costs him the vote of the pro-choice people concerned with human rights who see this as genocide. It takes a very special kind of person to be able to rationalize a mother's burden is more important and valuable then a human life that's breathing on its own outside of their mother's womb.

Oh well, Obama's got black skin so that means the Catholics are bigots. Silly Catholics!

Posted by: Ijane | April 25, 2008 1:56 PM
Report Offensive Comment

"Clearly, Murphy is an optimist. But is he Catholic?"

With a name like that, what do you think? ;) Certainly Irish. :)

Posted by: Paganplace | April 25, 2008 12:15 PM
Report Offensive Comment

There are three possible outcomes to every event and two of them are bad.

Spreemails say three things and two of them are lies.

In order to get the good and avoid the lie we must rely on Murphy who said, "if anything can happen it will" -- defy the odds against it happening.

There is a one in three chance it's good and there is a one in three chance it's so. That makes it a one in nine chance both will happen. "If anything can happen it will" no matter the odds against it happening.

Clearly, Murphy is an optimist. But is he Catholic?

Posted by: BGone | April 25, 2008 12:03 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Thinking that Catholics vote as a block is hard to fathom. There are no Catholics in this race for the Presidency. There are many reasons why Catholics may consider voting for Obama. In a democracy their vote must be won.

Posted by: lescaine | April 25, 2008 10:35 AM
Report Offensive Comment

Blue Berlin is all wrong about Catholics not going for the Faith and Values stuff. They love it. They may not love it when given by redneck or blackneck preachers, but they love it.

They oppose abortion because they want their peasant wives barefoot and pregnant.

Posted by: candide | April 25, 2008 9:45 AM
Report Offensive Comment

Rich says "the church is averse to trying to give political marching orders" How then do you justify denial of Communion to politicians who vote against the Church's will.

As for Anonymous, ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad. Ask an average Catholic about gays and Muslims and tell me again who are the bigots.

Posted by: Anonymous | April 25, 2008 8:36 AM
Report Offensive Comment

I think Candide and Roy are both bigots and haters who want to make Catholics into some kind of bogeymen. Shame on you for being so ignorant and narrow-minded. How can anyone be so rude and insulting. Do you KNOW every Catholic walking the earth. Why don't you keep your nasty, foolish, misguided comments to yourself. You obviously have no clue about what you are talking about. (And by the way, how do you reconcille the issue of black Catholics?)

Posted by: Anonymous | April 25, 2008 8:26 AM
Report Offensive Comment

Catholics gave the majority of their votes to George W. Bush in 2004 because Bush fit the bill for their inbred bigotry against Muslims and gays.

Posted by: Roy | April 25, 2008 8:18 AM
Report Offensive Comment

I find many of the comments on this board needlessly prejudice and blithely ignorant. I won't even address which comments I mean, but I think it's clear that I am referring to any of the comments above that pigeonhole Catholics into a single identity and then cast that group aside as racist and anti-semitic.

In all seriousness, I don't think Obama has a Catholic problem at all. In fact, as Doug Kmiec has written in Slate Magazine, I see many reasons that Obama is, indeed, THE candidate for many Catholics. What's more, it's bordering on absurd to think that most of the people who supported Clinton in the primary won't also support Obama in the general election.

As a Catholic, I'll proudly support Barack Obama in the fall.

Posted by: Colin | April 25, 2008 12:10 AM
Report Offensive Comment

CANDIDE wrote:

Catholics who by and large don't have much class and sophistication.

April 24, 2008 7:13 PM

Posted by: Anonymous | April 24, 2008 8:43 PM
Report Offensive Comment

It also does not help that these are the very people that he insulted by proferring his 'Whats wrong with Kansas' narrative.

Posted by: John-Michael | April 24, 2008 5:10 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Candide

There obviously will be people (some Catholic) that do not vote for Barack because he is black. There will also be people that vote for Barack because he is black. All the polling that I have seen suggests that his ethnic background is a net positive for him.

I would think that his ability to win the nomination would dispel any doubts about the ability of a black man to take up residence at 1600 PA Ave. In the end I think issues are far more important. The people that Barack is having trouble with are the blue dog Dems. They are more likely to place importance on their 2nd amendment rights and on moral issues like abortion. In both of those areas Obama has a singularly dismal voting record according to their sensibilities. Hillary is not much better, but she is more skilled at making people feel as though they have something in common with her.

Posted by: John-Micahel | April 24, 2008 4:49 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The Democratic coalition is coming apart. Clinton gets the people who are Democrats because Roosevelt helped them survive the Depression. Obama gets the people who are Democrats because they didn't support the Vietnam War. He also gets their dimwitted college-aged children, who think Iwo Jima is in Vietnam, where Lincoln was born in a log cabin.

Roosevelt Democrats are very patriotic. They hate Obama's anti-American pro-terrorist sympathies. ("I've never in my adult life been proud of my country" and "Let's all just get together with Ahmedinejad and sing Kumbaya.") They aren't really into multi-culturalism. They'll go for McCain before thy go for Obama.

Six months ago, everybody was talking about the fragmenting Republican coalition. Life is weird.

Posted by: Eggy | April 24, 2008 2:53 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Well-known by whom, Candide? I am Catholic and have a huge number of Jewish and African American friends. What are you talking about? That sounds like a really misguided attempt to say that Catholics are bigots. I think you are projecting your own hateful agenda.

To the point of why I, as an American, do not consider Obama a candidate I would vote for- it has nothing to do with my Catholicism. It has to do with his immaturity, lack of experience, poor judgement and shady agenda. Nothing at all from a religious stand point. Everything that turns me off about him has to do with secular and political issues, nothing spiritual, racial or cultural.

Posted by: D. Rodriguez | April 24, 2008 2:44 PM
Report Offensive Comment

second that

Posted by: John-Michael | April 24, 2008 2:34 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Moderator,

Is there any chance of deleting JJ forever from this forum? His long, sick, bigoted posts make it nearly impossible to converse with others. Plus, he is fond of making personal attacks. Please help! This is the second blog he has ruined in 10 minutes.

Posted by: Arminius | April 24, 2008 2:31 PM
Report Offensive Comment

In the archdiocese where I live there are 60,000 black Catholics. I doubt whether they're anti-black or anti-Jewish.

Obama's problem with Catholics is his extremist view on abortion - permissable at any stage of pregnancy for any reason whatsoever. He has even said that a viable fetus who survives an abortion should be left to die. I would hope that would give a lot of people a reason to think seriously about his attitude towards life issues.

Posted by: Benedicta | April 24, 2008 1:53 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The problem with analyzing the "Catholic" vote is that, unlike the Protestant Evangelical vote, which is a tightly controlled subset of Southern rural voters under the command of paternalistic preachers who can reliably give them marching orders, Catholics are the opposite; the church is averse to trying to give political marching orders, and Catholics cannot be understood except in the context of ethnicity and social class. And this leads to further complexity in Obama's case, because underlying racism is not only a function of ethnicity and social class, but also age; we know that racism is probably behind his poor showing among elderly voters, but nobody's going to do that analysis out loud for fear of waking the sleeping giant, so the campaigns describe it as an "elderly" problem rather than a "race" problem.

In the end, the only way for Obama's campaign to understand their problem is to do guerilla polling where the race issue can be felt out to see who it's really affecting and who it isn't...

Posted by: Rich | April 24, 2008 12:48 PM
Report Offensive Comment

Wow Candide, thanks for the information. Here I have been Catholic all my life, and I never realized that. Its funny. I guess I somehow missed the fine print when we were taught to love everyone equally under God. Maybe the Catholics I have known are actually part of a super-secret Jew n' black hating fraternity. It must be a fraternity because we hate women too you know. I guess the Catholics I know that volunteer at breadlines are actually there because they get a kick out of seeing poor black people.

Oh I don't know. I guess I don't believe any of that at all because it runs counter to the sum total of my life experience. On second thought there might be a bit of projection going on here and the problem is not that Catholics are generally bigots but that,,,

Posted by: John-Michael | April 24, 2008 12:44 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.