Christopher Hale writes:

Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign displayed a noticeable aversion to engaging with Catholic voters. Unlike Biden, Harris avoided any sustained outreach to religious communities, including Catholics, who comprise nearly a quarter of the U.S. electorate. Her campaign did not run targeted ads aimed at Catholic voters, nor did it make a concerted effort to address their concerns on key issues like religious freedom, social justice, or life-affirming policies.

The decision to skip the Al Smith Dinner epitomized this reluctance. It wasn’t just a missed opportunity; it was a clear signal of disengagement.

For many Catholics, the absence reinforced the perception that their voices and values were unwelcome in the Democratic Party. In battleground states, where Catholic voters often swing elections, this oversight helped contribute to Harris’ defeat.

Harris’ failure to engage Catholic voters is symptomatic of a broader issue within the Democratic Party: a discomfort with engaging faith communities across the nation.

Over the years, the party has increasingly aligned itself with secular and progressive values, often sidelining religious voices in the process. This shift has alienated many religious voters, who feel their beliefs are not only unrepresented but actively dismissed.

For Catholics, this alienation is particularly acute on issues like abortion. While many Catholics support legal abortion in some circumstances, a significant portion believes in stricter limits or opposes it altogether….

This inflexibility makes it difficult for pro-life or moderately pro-choice Catholics to feel at home within the party, despite aligning with its positions on other critical issues like poverty, health care, and immigration….

I’m a political operative, so let me put it bluntly: A Democratic Party that loses 56-41 percent among Catholics, like it did in this election, is a Democratic Party without a future in vast portions of this country.

MSW writes:

As Alec McGillis reported in The New York Times, the people in those medium-sized cities that dot the Midwest know that their kids may not do as well as they did. What is more, they look out their window and see that the evaporation of opportunity has consumed their entire town. Deeply seated ideas about the American dream began to die. Of course they warmed to someone who promises to make America great again.

What is more, voters in this quadrant are tired of being told they are on the wrong side of history, that they are rubes, that if they can’t reconcile their dismal economic prospects with evidence of rising GDP, it is their fault. When they raise the perfectly respectable concern that maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to trash traditional norms regarding sexuality, they are called bigots. They wonder why anyone would accuse them of having “white privilege,” when they certainly don’t feel privileged.

Day in and day out, they saw that it wasn’t just the U.S. Catholic bishops who labeled abortion the “preeminent priority” in the election. Democrats led with the issue, without acknowledging the moral qualms even many pro-choice people have about the issue.

All of this created the groundswell that made Trump’s victory possible. A candidate who connects with people identified some of the deep grievances in the electorate.

At Commonweal, Rand Richards Cooper writes:

The wealthy, worldly, and highly educated parts of this nation are Democratic, while the struggling, provincial, and undereducated parts are Republican—and there are not enough of the former places and too many of the latter. Forty years of technological and commercial revolution, abetted by economic policies put forth by both parties, have produced an upper 20 percent of this country that’s doing extremely well, while everyone else struggles. That upper 20 percent is heavily concentrated in blue states like the one I live in (Connecticut). This has to change. The Democratic Party has to find a way not to be the party of bicoastal elites….

Normies don’t believe that the economy is okay when their kids will never be able to afford a house. Normies don’t hate Latinos, but they recognize that we have a huge problem with uncontrolled immigration at our southern border, and they don’t like being made to feel racist for recognizing it. Normies believe that trans people deserve individual dignity, but they may also believe that there are males and females, that the reality of biology can’t simply be dispensed with (or altered), and that trans women should not be allowed to compete in sports against biological females. These normies will only take so much scolding and correction before they decide to bolt from a Democratic party that they believe has lost touch with reality. Anyone who doubts this is happening should check the results of last night’s vote in, say, the suburbs of New Jersey.