On August 13, I wrote:
Obama will chose Joe Biden. I must say, if I'd drawn up a veep list a few list a few months ago, Biden wouldn't have even made the top ten. He's a Washington insider and a two-time failed presidential candidate who represents a safe Democratic state (Delaware). But here's why I think Obama might just go there. The main reason he makes most top ten lists these days is his experience with foreign affairs. What became clear to me was that Biden is probably the best pick in terms of religious politics. Obama desperately needs to retain his lead among Catholics and improve upon John Kerry's showing.But choosing a pro-choice Catholic could backfire because the Bishops and others will attack him or her for being a bad Catholic. Choosing a full-blown pro-life Catholic would alienate pro-choice, independent women and Hillary voters. Biden is pro-choice but got a low rating from abortion rights groups (60% in 2007, 39% in 2003). In other words, he's Catholic enough to appeal to Catholics, pro-life enough to avoid Bishop attacks, and pro-choice enough to satisfy Hillary voters.
A source close to the Obama campaign tells my Beliefnet colleague Dan Gilgoff (a.k.a. God-o-Meter) that the "fact that Biden's a proud and committed Catholic was definitely a big plus."
Biden went to Catholic boys school and has said, "The animating principle of my faith, as taught to me by church and home, was that the cardinal sin was abuse of power. It was not only required as a good Catholic to abhor and avoid abuse of power, but to do something to end that abuse."
He goes to mass regularly and says, "I get comfort from carrying my rosary, going to mass every Sunday. It's my time alone:"
Remember: for all the talk about the evangelical vote, the fight for the Catholic vote is just as important. John Kerry lost the Catholic vote in 2004, despite being Catholic. Obama needs to win the Catholic vote, and Biden can help him do that.
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I loved the speeches of Obama and Biden today. I even liked Biden's gaff of Obama America. It sort of sounds like Captain America.
The Democratic ticket sounds like the Working Man's Party of old. The party of FDR is on the rise and it is about time. Ever sense Ronald Reagan, the working man has been ignored and berated. We have lost jobs, purchasing power and been treated like junk yard dogs.
As an Irish-American Catholic (second generation) of working class origins, it sickens me that he holds himself out as a Catholic. Two things: first, one doesn't go to Catholic church for "time alone;" church is a community moment, especially for Irish Catholics, to whom the Church was the only institution through which they could express their national bond during centuries of oppression. If you want religious meditative time alone, take up yoga. Second, and you know this is coming, a true Catholic cannot condone abortion, let alone take affirmative steps to enable it. Don't bother bringing up war or the death penalty: they're not on the same level. I don't get to define myself as a committed vegan, if I believe it's OK to eat meat and work in a stockyard, however neat or comfortable or convenient I think it might be to be a vegan. 'Catholic' is not a label, it's a belief system, like all religions. You can agree with its, or (as is likely) not, but it is what it is.
Coastie,
the abortion debate is not whether abortion is right (it's not), but whether we should punish/jail those who do it (patients and doctors).
I am a physician, and I think every person should have total autonomy over their own body (i.e I can't and won't operate on someone without their informed consent). Forcing a woman to have a child against her will (delivery is not without pain or risk) strikes me as a breach of that bedrock principle. Of course, destroying a human life is also wrong. Which of these rights trumps the other, and when is a fetal life a human being is an argument that, to borrow from BO, is "above my pay grade".And if you think it is "conception", then which step: sperm-egg binding, membrane fusion, pro-nuclei fusion, zygote division, or implantation?
The church may be certain on this, but I would not vote based on that one test. War is certainly much more evil.
The Catholic Chuch in America needs to move on regarding the abortion issue. We Catholics all know that abortion is the wrong thing to do. Conversely, we also know that the sexual molestation of children by some Catholic priests and bishops is the wrong thing to do. Certainly the Church has made every effort to move on regarding this horrible crime. People have a free conscience and should be able to decide for themselves, rather than having a cleric instruct us on the salient issues of life and death. Certainly, I decide for myself on issues of conscience. That is why Iam in the great tradition of the United States of America, and not the mandates of an antiquated European establisment that is too busy peering into the bedrooms of Catholics and not big enough to peer into their own bedrooms lest they realize that all men and women are human, with no person better or worse than the other person
There are so many important issues that maybe for a while we shold work to solve the ones that we all agree upon. Poverty, war, intolerance. Perhaps if we all worked on these, fewer people would find themselves in such a horrible position to have to make the choice for an abortion.
I believe this is the approach that Obama wants to pursue. I hope you will join with him so that we can improve the lives of so many.
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