Left at the Altar
How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
In 1960, Democrats and Catholics united to elect John F. Kennedy, America's first Catholic president. As we approach the 2008 presidential election, the Democratic party is struggling to secure Catholic votes. For most of the twentieth-century, however, the Catholic vote was solidly Democratic. In Left at the Altar, Michael Sean Winters chronicles the rise and fall of this vital alliance, and offers compelling arguments for its revival. For the Democrats, the stakes could not be higher: The explosive growth of the Latino population will make the Catholic vote decisive in the twenty-first century. The stakes are high for Catholics, too: In their defection to the Republican party, Catholics have drifted from their traditional advocacy of core values including peace and social justice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Winters's provocative foray into the Democratic Party's estrangement from Catholics\x97their erstwhile stable constituency\x97contends that Democrats made a fatal mistake by embracing the New Left in the late 1960s and 1970s, prioritizing abortion and gay rights at the expense of their religious supporters. In painstaking detail, the book shows how the party methodically alienated Catholic voters, from Roe v. Wade to their opposition to the religious right's moralistic vision for America. It's not a new thesis, but Winters is sympathetic to his subject and has a sincere understanding of Catholic voters' priorities. He delves into the forgotten history of Catholic liberalism, and his portrayal of Franklin Roosevelt's wooing of religious voters to broaden his coalition is particularly insightful. Not everyone will be convinced by his prescriptions for the Democrats, which involve abandoning their cherished prochoice ideas and injecting more religious themes into rhetoric, but the book is well written and contains an understanding of contemporary electoral politics that even its detractors will have to reckon with.
