Willie Pep
Willie Pep's JournalCatholic nuns come out against GOP health care bill
Over 7,000 Catholic nuns unite against 'immoral' GOP health care bill in a public letter to senators
by Jen Hayden
A group representing more than 7,000 Catholic nuns has released an absolutely scorching statement on the Republican health care bill, calling it “immoral” and the “most harmful legislation for American families in our lifetimes, and it goes against our Catholic faith teaching.” They also rightly called out the bill for being the opposite of “pro-life.”
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See: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/7/24/1683418/-Over-7-000-Catholic-nuns-unite-against-immoral-GOP-health-care-bill-in-a-public-letter-to-senators
Is the Religious Right to Blame for Christianity's Decline?
June 5, 2017
Is the Religious Right to Blame for Christianity’s Decline?
The movement is one of the most dramatic failures in American political history.
By George Hawley
No one will be surprised to learn that religious beliefs, affiliations, and activities are important predictors of political attitudes and actions. This is one of the more well-studied subjects in the field of political behavior. Most of the literature examining this relationship, however, assumed a causal arrow that points in only one direction: religion influences politics. The stack of books and papers considering whether trends in politics influence trends in religion is much shorter. This is starting to change, and the results of this research increasingly suggests that the Religious Right played at least some role in America’s declining religiosity.
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Full article: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-the-religious-right-to-blame-for-christianitys-decline/
Unions should be prophetic voice for a new social compact, Pope says.
June 28, 2017
Pope Francis said that trade unions should fulfill a prophetic role in society, in a June 28 meeting with members of the Confederation of Trade Unions in Italy.
“The union is an expression of the prophetic role of society,” the Pontiff said. He explained that a union should not be merely a political institution, but a representative of the true interests of workers in the cooperative work of production.
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Full article: http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=31977&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CatholicWorldNewsFeatureStories+%28Catholic+World+News+%28on+CatholicCulture.org%29%29
Going after moderate suburban Republicans is a waste.
After Handel's win tonight, I hope the Democratic Party will give up on the quixotic campaign to win over supposedly moderate, suburban Republicans. These voters might not like Donald Trump very much but they largely support the GOP's agenda, especially on economic issues. By trying to court these folks we risk alienating our natural base among working-class and middle-class people.
In my own personal experience this demographic is mainly concerned with tax cuts. They will never vote for the Democrats in numbers large enough to offset our losses among less affluent people who will feel alienated by our shifting right on economics and thus decide to stay home. The Democrats should focus their money and energy on winning back working-class swing voters and increasing turnout among the poor, the working-class and people of color.
Will gun control return to the national agenda?
In the wake of the 2016 election I recall a number of Democrats saying that gun control was a dead issue and a political loser. Do you think today's tragedies, not just the shooting at the Republican baseball practice field but also the shooting at the UPS center in San Francisco, put gun control back on the agenda?
Trying to win over Republicans is a bad strategy
Following Gianforte's win I notice a lot of people writing about cuts to social programs like Medicare and how this will hurt Republican voters thus showing how deluded and stupid these voters are. But are less affluent people really voting for the GOP in huge numbers? My understanding is that the GOP's voter base is still more affluent than that of the Democrats and so pointing out the awfulness of GOP economic policy in order to win over Republicans seems like a lost cause to me. Many Republicans probably won't be directly hurt by cuts to Medicare and other social programs and they will be happy to see these cuts happen as long as they get tax cuts. It seems to me that Democrats need to do more to get out the vote among less affluent people who often don't vote as opposed to trying to win over Republicans.
Trump's immoral budget
Trump's immoral budget
by Michael Sean Winters
In a federal budget document, the words "social justice" do not appear. In fact, the most basic terms by which we discuss morality, "right" and "wrong," do not appear either. Yet, a government's budget is a profoundly moral document, containing as it must the priorities being put forward on behalf of we the people, evidencing the values we are trying to advance and what common efforts we think are worth funding.
The Trump administration's budget proposal is profoundly immoral.
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For the full article see: https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/trumps-immoral-budget
My friend the non-voter and why so many stayed home.
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who I have not seen in a while. We eventually started to discuss politics. He talked about how much he dislikes Trump because he is a racist and a misogynist who mistreats women. He also mentioned that he is very worried about Trump's ties to Russia and the people he is choosing for his administration like Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson.
I assumed that he voted for Clinton but then he stated that he didn't vote at all! Not even in the other races. When I asked him why he said that he felt that Hillary was too corrupt. The emails were the big issue for him. My friend typically votes for the Democrats and is a big fan of Obama because he sees him as a good man with strong moral qualities. He isn't super left-wing. He even said that he disliked Sanders because he thought he was too much of a socialist for his liking. So he is not a Bernie or Bust guy.
I wonder how typical my friend is for the group of people who usually vote for the Democrats but sat out this election. He is an older Millennial in his early 30s and a college graduate but not affluent.
Do you think that my friend fits the profile of the typical non-voter from 2016? Do you think my anecdote shows the effectiveness of the email story in hurting Clinton? What I found interesting was how much emphasis he put on the moral integrity of the candidates.
Anyway, I thought this was an interesting anecdote and I wanted to see if this could help us discuss why so many people who should have come out for the Democrats stayed home.
EDIT: Oh and to complete the demographic profile, my friend is a white guy and a practicing Roman Catholic.
We can win white racists and white Christian voters
I think we can win more white voters. In fact, I think we can even win white voters who hold beliefs that many here would consider to be grossly illiberal.
Voters often hold a mixture of different policy views. People will often rank these views within their own minds. I don't mean that they sit down and make a list of ten policy views with number one being their most important view and number ten being their least important view. But I do think that when it comes time to vote some views win out over others.
So let us use a hypothetical. You have two voters who are similar. Let us say two working-class, middle-aged white guys from the Rust Belt, both union members. Both of them hold discriminatory views about non-whites and Muslims.
Voter A ends up voting for the Republicans because his discriminatory beliefs take precedence over all of his other beliefs. He might realize that the Republicans are union busters and that his Social Security and Medicare might be in danger if the Republicans win but in his mind stopping the Muslims from forcing sharia law on us or deporting more Mexicans back to Mexico is more important so he votes for the GOP because they are “speaking his language” on those issues.
Voter B might hold the same views toward Muslims and Mexican immigrants that Voter A holds but Voter B is more worried about the health of his union and whether Social Security and Medicare will be available to him when he retires so he votes for the Democrats, even though he thinks the Democrats are too PC.
The same thing holds for other issues. Some white Christians are single-issue voters on abortion and overturning Roe v. Wade so they vote for the Republicans like clockwork. Other white Christians might oppose the Democratic stance on abortion but they may vote for the Democrats because they are not single-issue voters and have a more nuanced position on pro-life issues. For example, they might see opposition to the death penalty and support for universal healthcare as part of a broader pro-life position.
My last example pretty much describes me. I am a Catholic and I consider myself to be a pro-lifer but I vote for the Democrats because I think that when you look at the big picture, liberal values and policies are more consistently pro-life than the Republican platform that is only concerned with overturning Roe and not with healthcare for mothers and children, for example.
Now I am not saying that the party needs to stop fighting for social justice. Racism is a huge problem in this country and we need to fight racist messaging from the Right if we want to win more elections. We also need to do more to break the stranglehold that the Right has over religious discourse in this country. But in the meantime we can still win over voters who are not perfectly liberal on every issue. I know we can do this because to a large extent we already win over people with mixed beliefs. Even now our own base includes many people who are not entirely liberal on every issue. African-Americans, for example, tend to be more religious and socially conservative than other demographic groups but they are a key part of our base.
See this article on what Pew Research Center calls the “Faith and Family Left”: http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/26/typology-comparison/types/faith-and-family-left/
Of course, some people are truly hopeless. Some white Americans vote based on racial tribalism first and foremost. But I suspect that their numbers are not as large as many Democrats think.
The denigration of public service in modern America
With the talk of celebrities and billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg possibly running for political office, I notice that there is a strong anti-public service streak in the country right now. People want "outsiders" who supposedly cannot be bought by lobbyists. I know some people who voted for Donald Trump because they thought that his immense wealth made him independent and above politics. Of course, we see that Trump is packing his administration with rich corporate types so his "outsider" status is very questionable.
Still, there seems to be a kind of revulsion toward "career politicians" and people in public service these days. I can understand this sentiment to a certain extent. If you think that our politicians and bureaucrats are overly influenced by Big Money and too many go through the revolving door from government to lucrative private sector jobs that is a legitimate criticism of our current political system.
But is the answer to elect actors and corporate tycoons? To me, the answer would be to have more respect for public servants and people who devote themselves to public issues. But too many people seem to denigrate public service as something for losers or they just don't care. Apparently many people were not moved by Hillary Clinton's advocacy on behalf of children, for example.
I guess my point in a nutshell is it seems like Americans denigrate public service and that is a big problem for liberals. Liberalism has traditionally put a heavily emphasis on public service but now it seems like people want charismatic outsiders to run for office.
Any thoughts on this issue and how we can possibly change the way people think about public service?
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