Obama and Catholics

In his interesting and cogent analysis of the Democratic primaries and debates, Greg concludes that, "Obama now looks to be the weakest presidential candidate offered to Catholic voters by the Democratic Party since 1984." This may or may not be right, but I do not think it follows from the voting results in the Democratic primaries. What the Democratic primaries show is that Obama loses the Catholic vote to Clinton. That data shows little about how Obama would do with the Catholic vote against McCain. Indeed, it is theoretically possible (I would not say likely) that Obama could get a larger share of the Catholic vote against McCain than would Clinton. (Obama voters might not be willing to support Clinton; but Clinton voters might be willing to support Obama). It is unclear how much racial hostility figures into this picture. It is unclear how much hostility to strong women fits into this picture.
I do not even think current polls about how Clinton and Obama run against McCain are very good data. The race between the Democratic and Republican candidate is not in swing, let alone full swing. The Republican candidate is saddled with a bad war, a bad economy, and an 8 year Republican record that has little appeal to voters in the aggregate, Catholic or otherwise. Whatever the numbers are now, McCain will ultimately be on the defensive. In my view, it is way to early to suppose that either of the Democratic candidates offer less to Catholic voters (who themselves are not remotely monolithic) than prior Democratic candidates.