YOU CATHOLIC? HERE'S HOW TO VOTE
Bane, Mary Jo
Campaign rhetoric may articulate a principled theme and voters may embrace it. At the same time, voters also may re- spond to less principled subthemes voiced by politicians to take...
...I suppose it is because of what the Democratic Bolton) established a constitutionally protected regime of Party has been and remains that I believe that Democrats unrestricted abortion-on-demand-a regime recently reafare more likely to address these problems and work to solve firmed in the most uncompromising terms by the Stenberg v. them...
...a new partnership with Mexico...
...It is hard, admittedly, to point to specific policy proposals that clearly reflect these concerns...
...It has been, and is still, more than the Republicans, Carhart decision, which extended the mantle of constituthe party of the working class, of ethnic minorities, of im- tional protection to infanticide...
...We can further conclude that the expe- mary had some truly depressing moments...
...paign, that he has a stringent litmus test for Court nomiThe Democratic Party does not have solutions to these nees: any potential justice must be firmly committed to the problems...
...cleansing the sitions of both parties on the death penalty...
...no more presidential vetoes of federal warm my heart...
...It shows Should Gore make those three or four nominations and get more appreciation of the interconnectedness of the world his nominees confirmed by the Senate, not only would the and more sense of responsibility for the developing world...
...approach to international population policy...
...However, for many Americans it was the way vulnerable: the unborn, the dying, the young, the oppressed, to remove a presumed financial incentive for black women to the poor, and even the criminal...
...At the same time, voters also may respond to less principled subthemes voiced by politicians to take advantage of fears or of racial and gender stereotypes...
...migrants, of the struggling and the disenfranchised...
...Roe's It even, I would argue, shows more appreciation for the preciousness of life across the whole life cycle, especially for the lives of the very vulnerable...
...term abortions...
...ferent U.S...
...a diffinancing...
...F~ Mary Jo Bane is the Thorton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy "It's great up here-you can belong to both and Management at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard left- and right-wing organizations...
...And perhaps, at some point, the Democratic Party (or some party) will recognize the logic and the potential popular appeal of an approach that, in conventional terms, is both more socially conservative and more economically progressive...
...University...
...family advocates" "will not get their hands on my child...
...By the 1990s, Evangelicals had moved in droves to the Republicans because of their beliefs about the moral life...
...To some, "local Mary Jo Bane control of schools" and "school vouchers" are practical ways to reform education and provide an alternative for minorities would like to vote, this year or sometime, for trapped in terrible schools...
...And because democratic politics is the best mechanism we have yet invented for doing our public work What we can conclude, however, is that histori- this side of the kingdom, it means being committed to open, cally racial symbols and code words were more thoughtful, evidence-based deliberation...
...Life ex- on the Lincoln Bedroom...
...Again, as with Evangelicals, it is criminal, but also not precluding the possibility of influimportant to remember that racial and class conflicts are hard encing or regulating moral behavior, for example on lateto disentangle...
...It means ladder were in competition with African Americans for jobs, not assuming that everything that is sinful ought also to be homes, and neighborhoods...
...We do not yet know whether the 1996 election will have initiated a religious-based political realignment that will see large number of Catholics follow Evangelicals into the Republican Party...
...Or on campaign Augean stables of the Justice Department...
...education policies that rate parents' inalienable But there is more to it than that...
...For someone (quoting ies in drawing Catholics and Evangelicals to here Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan) who was "baptized the Republican Party than appeals to patriotism or the moral a Catholic but born a Democrat," this year's Democratic prirestoration agenda...
...YOU CATHOLIC...
...For me it follows from a commitment to the essential danger...
...The country is in an era rights higher than the self-interest of the National Education of unparalleled prosperity and the planet is in a period of un- Association...
...Gore and Lieberman, like "the other side," " are busily directing their attention to middle-class swing voters...
...Nor am I inspired by what are now the po- I bans on partial-birth abortion...
...powerful during the sixties, seventies, and eight- Neither party meets my criteria...
...In the 1980s some Mainliners were already voting Democratic in reaction against the cultural themes Republican leaders were articulating...
...a "Not for Rent" sign well-being, is almost as great as it has ever been...
...a man at home with himself versus pectancies for some groups of African Americans are as low a man constantly reinventing himself (and concocting fairy as in the poorest countries of the world...
...We cannot, in conscience, clear in his acceptance speech, as he has throughout his camignore these facts or disclaim responsibility...
...pruNonetheless, I will vote for Gore-Lieberman...
...One and one-half billion of our sis- The next president will likely make three, perhaps four, ters and brothers on earth live below a poverty line-defined Supreme Court nominations...
...To others it is assurance that a ticket and a party that is pro-life, pro-family, teachers' unions led by women, Jews, and blacks, or "alternate and pro-poor...
...And it appears that the Democratic nominees are determined to contest that same terrain...
...Given the nature of the 2000 election campaign, it appears that the Republican nominee is aiming at Catholics and Mainline Protestants for whom religion is not a tight set of laws but a source of goodness...
...It restates the ed, for many whites reducing taxes was a way to keep their very Catholic notion of a consistent ethic of life, which seeks hard earned dollars from being redistributed to indolent to cherish and enhance, through both private and public acblack hands...
...Vice President Al Gore made as one dollar per day per person...
...And the gap be- tales in the process)-all of these strike me as persuasive reatween rich and poor countries is shockingly large, and ap- sons to vote for George W. Bush for president...
...At the same time, the gap be- tion that understands that the armed forces are not primartween rich and poor in this country, in terms of material ily a laboratory for social engineering...
...Commonweal 20 October20,2000...
...It is difficult to know...
...However, as journalist Thomas Edsall has suggest- dignity and equality of every human person...
...But I believe that their approach to, for example, health insurance, Social Security, and tax cuts or lack thereof is considerably more likely to benefit those who need it most...
...But to some whites Here's how to vote it also means that no federal court order "will force my child to attend a predominantly black school...
...11 Commonweal 1 9 October 20, 2000 for Bill Bradley and Vice President Al Gore trade accusations about who, over the longest period of time, had been Mary Jo Bane the most rabidly prochoice up to the last minute before delivery, or about who might, for one moment, have secretly he restoration of honesty and honor to the presharbored a positive thought about school vouchers, did not idency...
...This choice dent moves toward enhancing senior citizens' lives through is no doubt partly a matter of simple lethargy: I have never a partial privatization of Social Security...
...pears to be growing...
...Abolishing welfare as we know it" might be a tion, life from its beginning to its end, but with due concern principled way to reduce intergenerational dependence on for the middle years as well...
...Do Catholics respond to princi- As I have thought it through, being pro-life, pro-family, pled appeals, or to stereotyping, or to a sense of relative de- and pro-poor means neither idolizing the free market with privation...
...I think of it as pro-life, pro-family and pro-poor, and I eagerly await an opportunity to vote for it...
...health-care reform voted for a Republican presidential candidate since my first that doesn't turn the problem over to the guys who can't fix vote, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964...
...Perhaps this is closer to what it means to be a good American than what it means to be a consistent Christian...
...Very modest numbers of Catholics were moving to the Republicans because of these same issues...
...In much of sub-Saharan Africa, and in But the overriding reason is simply stated: the Supreme some countries of the former Soviet Union, life expectan- Court...
...I It's not clear to me why this formulation For many who felt that the growth of big government threat- (which I was introduced to by the Reverend Eugene Rivers ened America's unique blend of democracy and republi- and political scientist John Dilulio) seems so odd to so many canism, the reduction of taxes was the way to reduce that people...
...Watching Senariences of the 1980s and 1990s added fuel to partisan transitions...
...It takes its stand with the most government...
...Campaign rhetoric may articulate a principled theme and voters may embrace it...
...an administraparalleled global integration...
...have babies out of wedlock...
...States' rights" can mean democratic responsiveness from a unit of government closer to the people...
...abortion license remain unbridled for generations...
...Certainly those white its disregard for inequality, nor assuming that all problems Catholics at the lower to middle rungs of the occupational are best solved by large federal spending programs...
...cies are actually falling...
...the potholes...
...The solutions are very hard, and there are no sim- notion that Roe v. Wade (with its companion case Doe v. ple answers...
Vol. 127 • October 2000 • No. 18
