Voters voting in the tradition of Catholic Social Doctrine and Moral/Political Theology and Philosophy? The clear consequences of lack of catechesis

My colleague Michael Moreland and I note Michael Perry's sharing (here) to a NY Times blog post indicating that, based on exit poll data, Senator Obama carried the Catholic vote 54-45 (in 2004, President Bush carried Catholics 52-47). But those of us who care about how the Catholic community contributes to American politics should note that, basically, the Catholic vote is merely tracking the vote of the rest of the population. Whether on account of a generation of failed catechesis or a more general lack of formation in Catholic institutions (parishes, high schools, colleges and universities), the number of Catholic voters whose vote is informed by their faith is a small slice of the national electorate. Catholics behave politically like their neighbors--the partisan breakdown of white working class Catholics, white suburban Catholics, or Latino Catholics is just about what one would predict based on their economic and cultural location. As this perceptive op-ed in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/features/religion/la-oe-rutten29-2008oct29,0,2918246.column) pointed out a few weeks ago:
"What we're seeing in these three swing states [Missouri, Colorado, and Pennsylvania] is the end of the Catholic vote, as conventional political strategists traditionally have expected it to behave -- in part because it's now so large it pretty much looks like the rest of America; in part because of its own internal changes. National polls have shown for some time that, although Catholics are personally opposed to abortion, they believe it ought to be legal in nearly identical percentages to the rest of America. Moreover, as a survey by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate found earlier this year, only 18% of Catholics "strongly" agree with the statement: "In deciding what is morally acceptable, I look to the church teachings and statements by the pope and bishops to form my conscience."
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What all this suggests is that, in this and coming election cycles, we may see a new model for the Catholic vote, one whose participation more closely resembles that of Jews, 75% of whom are overwhelmingly pro-Democratic, while a devout minority, the Orthodox, tends more strongly Republican. If you break the Catholic vote down in roughly the same pattern, you get something that looks like the current national spread. According to most reliable data, slightly less than one in four Catholics now assist [sic] at weekly Mass and are more open to GOP policies, while the overwhelming majority of their co-religionists have cast their lot with the Democrats' domestic and foreign policies."

Or as Joseph Bottum put it (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/818vklel.asp) reviewing George Martin's book on the American Catholic vote in the pages of the Weekly Standard four years ago:
"Add it all up, and it's hard to see any place that Catholicism makes a difference in American political life. In the ballots Catholic voters cast, in the positions Catholic politicians take, in the pieces Catholic writers publish--in what Catholics do, and what they fail to do--they are ordinary Republicans and Democrats; their faith seems invisible. They are utterly indistinguishable from the general run of citizens. In his famous talk to Protestant ministers in Houston during the 1960 campaign, John Kennedy said he didn't want to be a Catholic president; he wanted instead to be a president who happened to be Catholic. Catholicism in America seems to have since become entirely a Church of little John Kennedys.
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The fact that Catholic voters are invisible feels wrong to me, somehow--a theological error, a philosophical mistake. The uniqueness of the Catholic vote wants to be true, if only because American history and intellectual consistency alike seem to demand that being Catholic make a difference in how one behaves in the public square. But accurate political analysis, like well-directed pastoral teaching, needs to begin with the truth: The Catholic voter is, alas, a myth."

Of course, those of us who teach at Catholic institutions and write about matters Catholic want there to be a ready audience for this blog, in our classrooms, and in the pages of Commonweal, America, and First Things for an informed and enriching dialogue between faith and politics. But wishing doesn't make it so.