Steve Waldman notes that the attacks on Joe Biden’s Catholic bona fides came fast and furious after he was named Obama’s running mate on Saturday.
But there’s little doubt that Biden’s Catholicism was a major factor in Obama’s decision to pick him. A well-placed source close to the campaign tells God-o-Meter that “the fact that [Biden's]a proud and committed Catholic was definitely a big plus… the guy’s the real deal.” The source emailed GOM this 2007 Christian Science Monitor profile, which likely means that Obama’s Catholic outreach team will be mailing out to Catholic opinion-shapers everywhere.
It’s no secret that Obama has a Catholic problem. God-o-Meter riffed on the numbers from a Quinnipiac polls just a few weeks ago:
In both Florida and Ohio, Obama’s losing white Catholics to McCain by 52-percent to 40-percent. That’s not an insignificant gap. (In Pennsylvania, white Catholics are evenly split between the Democratic and Republican candidates.) It’s not as dramatic as the gap in 2004, when John Kerry lost white Ohio Catholics (one in four Buckeye State voters) to President Bush 59-41 and lost Florida Catholics 59-41. But the difference from 2004 says more about Catholic uncertainty about John McCain than any increase in Catholic support for Obama.
Most of the candidates on Obama’s short list for veep were Catholics: Biden, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. So Obama knows he has a Catholic problem. After John Kerry–a Catholic–lost the Catholic vote in 2004, Democrats are paying a lot closer to that problem. The thing to watch for this week is whether and how Biden responds to the attacks from conservative Catholic groups and whether actual Catholic bishops join the fray. Kerry’s failure to respond to attacks from those two camps made it seem like he was running against the Catholic church rather than as a member of it.
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posted August 25, 2008 at 3:25 pm
The only way for the Democrats to claim the high ground with the Christians in America is to show them that the religous right has interpreted scripture in their attempt to influence them. There is no where in the Bible that you can find a single verse that speaks about abortion. The only place where we are told when man becomes a living soul is in Genesis ch2 vrs 7 where we are told that adam became a living soul after he took his first breath. That is it, a human being is not a living soul until they take their first breath, an embryo has growth life but not soul life. To interpret scripture is a much bigger sin than the non-sin of having an abortion. The bible is like aperson if you torture it enough it will tell you what you want to hear, but that doesn’t make it the truth. the truth is what it says without any interpretation.
posted August 25, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Have you investigated the evidence that McCain’s anecdote about his Christian guard during his imprisonment ( the cross drawn in the dirt) appears in Alexander Solshenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago”?
Either 1) the incident occurred to both men (unlikely), or 2)
Solzhenitsyn lifted it from McCain (nearly impossible, since the ‘Gulag’ appeared in the early 70′s and Solzhenitsyn never learned English)
or 3) McCain lifted it from the Russian Nobel laureate. If this is the case, one can only wonder what else about McCain’s past is authentic.
posted August 26, 2008 at 4:52 pm
Robert,
Interesting proposal. When I spoke with Rick Warren last week, he cited another Bible verse that he argued supported the pro-life position: