Ethnic Catholics Exiled from the "Democratic Party Eden"

A non-Catholic finally understands "my people":

Rod Dreher reports on Bill Galston's speech "Religion, Moral Values and the Democratic Party":

Galston, who is Jewish, is one of the leading American scholars of Catholic social thought. He says he spends a lot of time among Catholic intellectuals of all kinds, and says the sense of having been thrown "out of the Democratic Party Eden" is profound. "And the abortion issue is at the center of that expulsion. I cannot manage to find a Catholic intellectual who will not in conversation refer to what happened to Bob Casey at the 1992 Democratic convention." Says it's important symbolically that the Dems are trying to right that wrong with the Bob Casey, Jr. candidacy in Pennsylvania.

One of my cousins is a local Dem politician who, despite his incredible charm, ethical sense, and political talent, has been consistently held back by the state party leadership. My family, nostalgic for Chicago's ethnic Catholic party machine, still resents the leadership, and is increasingly voting GOP because of it.

Looking forward to Mark Stricherz's book, which is said to examine the exile and exodus of my kind from the Democratic party. As for Casey Junior, I'm not optimistic. Consider the precedent set by local Catholic Dem gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter, who grovelled before Moloch instead of taking a principled stand.