The death of Jimmy Carter brings a much-needed reminder that American presidents, including Democrats, have on occasion provided object lessons in integrity, decency and compassion. In fact, it’s hard to identify another American President who cared more about human suffering and did more, post-presidency, to help alleviate it. Carter was not an impressive president in terms of concrete reforms that were enacted during his one term. And he was brutally shellacked by Reagan in 1980. And like President Biden, another decent man, who got more done in his one term than Carter, he was undone by inflation (as well as the Iran hostage crisis). I can still remember the SNL parody in which Dan Akroyd, playing President Carter, evoked laughter with the rant, “Inflation is our friend.” And that’s a point worth engraving on the portal of the DNC’s headquarters: “Inflation is a Democrat-killer.” Democrats need a more forceful strategy for fighting against it, so come what may, they at least appear to be fighting it with substantial reforms. Pretending it doesn’t exist did not work out well for Carter or Biden. His shortcomings notwithstanding, President Carter will be rightly revered for his fundamental decency, commitment to peace (Nobel Peace Prize winner) and humanitarian works, in the starkest possible contrast to the incoming president-elect.
At The National Catholic Reporter, Michael Sean Winters probes the question, “Can Catholics save the Democrats?,” and writes: “It is not a new question. I wrote a book about it in 2008: Left at the Altar: How the Democrats Lost the Catholics and How the Catholics Can Save the Democrats. There was overlap in my diagnosis then with the assessments from Judis, Teixeira and Hunter this year. But Catholic social teaching contains a moral imperative that more secular diagnoses lack: The Gospel compels us to stand with the marginalized and to be at least suspicious of the wealthy and the powerful. In 2024, it became painfully obvious that the Democrats are now the party of the well-to-do and the privileged, and that is no place for a Christian….So, Catholics, do you want to stand with those who claim to speak for the marginalized, or do you actually want to identify with the marginalized?….What is more, Catholic social teaching provides a morally coherent set of ideas and beliefs that would help the Democrats embrace more liberal economic policies and avoid more extreme cultural ones.” Catholic and Black Baptist Churches are the two religious constituencies which express the most concern about poverty and economic injustice, so Winters has a point, although Catholics can also be found among the most hard-hearted right-wingers.
Winters continues, “Pope Francis famously said that neoliberal economics is “an economy that kills.”….The pope has also made clear that Christians cannot harbor any animus to anyone, that the church must welcome everyone. He is well-known for hosting transgender sex workers…..But he also has condemned gender ideology. Welcoming someone does not require subscribing to their ideology. The Democrats’ problem on the transgender issue was not really with people who are transgender. It is with the way academics and others demand that people discuss, or not discuss, issues surrounding transgender ideology….The Democrats would never embrace the pope’s fierce opposition to abortion, but they might recognize that someone of his moral seriousness should have all of his moral convictions respected, even if they can’t be shared. Nor, in America, could we embrace the fullness of Catholic social teaching’s understanding of how an economy should work. But we could move in that direction. Same for just war theory….The Catholic Church from before the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council might not be of much help in building a national mythos broad enough to enlist the support of most Americans. But 60 years of interreligious dialogue since the close of Vatican II has provided at least some Catholic thinkers with the ability to engage those with different theological and ideological starting points, and build common understandings….Here, then, are the essential ingredients for a Democratic Party that can win national elections:
- Articulate an economic populism that appeals to voters and craft policies that will improve the economic prospects of working-class Americans.
- Moderate its hardline, academic-driven approach to cultural issues.
- And help fashion a national narrative that is capacious enough to embrace the hopes of all Americans.”
In similar vein check out “How the left can get its mojo back: Listen to working-class people of faith” by Nathaniel Manderson, who writes at Salon: “Everyone is trying to figure out what happened in the wake of the November election and what needs to be done to getting this country back on track. My advice is simple. Listen to the working-class people who are struggling, especially the folks at the bottom of the economic ladder, and even more specifically working-class people of faith. For all his hypocrisy and all his flaws, Donald Trump knew how to listen. Most liberals don’t….The working-class people of faith I’m talking about are blue-collar folks of all races, colors and backgrounds who tend to believe in something bigger than themselves. They have been drifting further right ever since Trump came into the picture, while the left, as I see it, has lost touch with what the Democratic Party used to stand for in word and deed. Contemporary liberals seem baffled that they’re losing working-class people of faith to Trump….when I see working-class people of faith who believe they are being ignored or overlooked by the structures of power in our society, I completely understand their desire either to stay out off politics altogether — or try to blow it up, by voting for the guy who seems intent on disrupting the system….While I realize that “woke” has become a right-wing cliché, that has happened for a reason. Liberal need to “woke” themselves and start to recognize that they have lost the support of working-class people of faith because they stopped listening and speaking to them, and only show them contempt rather than respect. There are a lot of us, and we are not deplorable. We are tired, broke, hard-working Americans, and we feel ourselves losing. Listening to us is the only way to reclaim the integrity of liberal values, and the pathway to reclaiming the American dream.”
Yet these are the students that Democrats recruit to run their campaigns…
https://www.nber.org/papers/w33164?utm_campaign=CESO%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=338059132&utm_source=hs_email
We compile, transcribe, and standardize historical records for 2.5 million students at 65 elite (private and public) U.S. colleges.
By combining these data with more recent survey and administrative data, we assemble the largest dataset on the socioeconomic backgrounds of students at American colleges spanning the last 100 years.
We document the following:
First, despite a large increase in the share of lower-income students in the overall college-going population, the representation of these students at elite private or public colleges has remained at similarly low levels throughout the last century.
Second, the representation of upper-income students at elite colleges decreased after World War II, but this group has regained its high representation since the 1980s.
Third, while there has been no increase in the economic diversity of elite private and public colleges, these colleges have become more racially and geographically diverse.
Fourth, two major policy changes in the history of American higher education, namely the G.I. Bill after World War II and the introduction of standardized tests for admissions, had little success in increasing the representation of lower- and middle-income students at elite colleges.
When I voted for Carter in 1976, the official Democratic platform promised “a complete overhaul” of the federal tax code, which Gov. Carter had called “a disgrace to the human race.” They specifically promised to abolish the marriage penalty. For the next four years, the Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress and a Democratic President and at the end of that time, there was no tax reform. Far from it. At the time, federal income tax rates were not indexed for inflation. Even if you could keep up with inflation, which most people could not, the IRS got a bigger share of your “raise” than you did. My wife and I were paying more tax than ever on our marriage, the exact opposite of what the Democrats had promised. The Democrats didn’t just punt on their tax reform promises, they punted on third down. They deserved a rout in 1980 and got one.