In previous posts I have lamented the decline of the pro-life Democrats. Skeptics have told me that you can fit them in a telephone booth. Now, I fear, they’re being actively driven out of the party. Abortion rights activists sought to oust Representative Dan Lipinski, a Chicago-area congressman, who is one of the few pro-life Democrats left. He barely survived a challenge in the Illinois Democratic primary last week.
Fittingly, also last week, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York dissected and lamented the Democrats’ failure to support life as well as Catholic education, which benefits the poor and minorities.
Wrotes Dolan on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal on March 23:
[T]he dignity and sanctity of human life, the importance of Catholic schools, the defense of a baby’s civil rights . . . were, and still are, widely embraced by Catholics. This often led Catholics to become loyal Democrats. I remember my own grandmother whispering to me, “We Catholics don’t trust those Republicans.”
I can hear my grandmother, a life-long Democrat, saying the same.
Such is no longer the case, a cause of sadness to many Catholics, me included. [These] two causes . . . the needs of poor and middle-class children in Catholic schools, and the right to life of the baby in the womb . . . largely have been rejected by the party of our youth . . .. Last year, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez insisted that pro-life candidates have no place in the modern Democratic Party.
He concludes:
The “big tent” of the Democratic Party now seems a pup tent. Annafi Wahed, a former staffer to Hillary Clinton, recently wrote in this newspaper about her experience attending the Conservative Political Action Conference. She complimented the conservative attendees pointing out that most made her feel welcome at their meeting. They listened attentively to her views—a courtesy, she had to admit, that would not be given to them at a meeting of political liberals.
I’m a pastor, not a politician, and I’ve certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of America’s leading parties. But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.
If the Democratic Party cannot be persuaded to shift their views in principle, it seems that the Hindenburg of November 2016 might have taught them that their radical exclusion of life and support for Catholic education are bad politics. The states where Hillary Clinton critical lost — Midwest Rust Belt states and Florida – are ones where Catholic voters exist in large numbers, are willing to vote for either party, and would be persuaded by an economic progressive who is pro-life — or at least not radically pro-abortion rights, as Hillary was — and favors support for religious schools that are on the side of the little guy. But the Democrats can no longer claim to be the party of the little guy.