Donald Trump: 47th President of the United States
Catholic voters (and many others) demand respect in this year’s presidential race
In 2016, two weeks out, it was “Donald Trump: 45th President of the United States.”
So this columnist predicted. Eight years ago, to the day, on the eve of the election, “The November Surprise: Back to the 70s” added essential elements to the prediction.
This year, it’s “Back to the Future” once again—for Trump’s strong borders, from which flow a strong economy, strong national security, strong defense: A strong America.
But there are also major sleeper issues that will bring voters out in droves this Tuesday—including the spectrum of issues related to trashing of God’s beautiful design for the human person, reaching its apotheosis in the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz Democrat presidential ticket.
My sense is, it’s going to be a reality check like none other with “the brothers” and other huge racial and ethnic constituencies including Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans (courtesy recent major endorsements), coming out in droves to support Donald J. Trump as 47th President of the United States.
Then, there are the Catholics.
The big surprise this election season is that Catholics are supporting the Trump-Vance ticket by five percentage points in all seven swing states in the 2024 presidential race a National Catholic Reporter poll found. (Virginia was added to the swing state lineup after this mid-October poll.)
Counterbalancing what they did in 2008 as the crucial voting block giving Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Joseph Biden (D-DE) the White House.
The fruits have been bitter, epitomized by President Biden’s Vice President, Harris, who wrested control of the Democrat presidential nomination from him late July, skipping the Al Smith Dinner as the campaign was shifting into high-gear.
Harris’ “no show” represented an historic snub of Catholics.
But it was more than just her “no show”—the first time in 40 years.
Yet, that was bad enough. In 1984, after Vice President Walter Mondale, also that year’s Democrat presidential nominee, missed the dinner, he went up in flames in his historic landslide defeat against President Ronald Reagan.
If Harris, too, goes up in flames in a landslide defeat as many are predicting, this faux pas will not go uncommented upon.
For in choosing to thumb her nose at Catholics she skipped a landmark dinner named for four-term New York Governor Al Smith, “the happy warrior”—a fellow Democrat, no less—the first Catholic to be nominated for the top of the presidential ticket by a major political party, who lost to Herbert Hoover in 1928, notably because he was Catholic about which Ernest Hemingway famously wrote in Wine of Wyoming.
Not content to wallow in his defeat, Al Smith, living up to his moniker, went on to build the Empire State Building in the thirties, then, in 1946, founded this dinner to raise funds for “New York’s most vulnerable women and children,” the very charities that he fought to support in his public life including families with insufficient work or money to feed and clothe their children, many homeless or orphans, sick and infirm. Doing “for the least” as Christ lived and taught.
As Hemingway, who had himself just reignited his newfound Catholic faith, wrote commenting on Smith’s loss:
“The other day,” Madame Fontan said, “there was a little French girl here with her mother, the cousin of Fontan, and she said to me, ‘En Amérique il ne faut pas être catholique. It’s not good to be catholique. The Americans don’t like you to be catholique. It’s like the dry law.’ I said to her, ‘What you going to be? Heh? It’s better to be catholique if you’re catholique.’ But she said, ‘No, it isn’t any good to be catholique in America.’ But I think it’s better to be catholique if you are. Ce n’est pas bon de changer sa religion. My God, no.” …
“On dit que Schmidt est catholique,” Fontan said.
“On dit, mais on ne sait jamais,” Madame Fontan said. “I don't think Schmidt is catholique. There's not many catholique in America.”
“We are catholique,” I said.
“Sure, but you live in France,” Madame Fontan said. “Je ne crois pas que Schmidt est catholique. Did he ever live in France?” …
“I don't believe Schmidt is catholique,” Madame Fontan said. “That’s awful funny if he’s catholique. Moi, je ne crois pas.”
“Il est catholique,” I said.
“Schmidt is catholique,” Madame Fontan mused. “I wouldn't have believed it. My God, il est catholique.”
Madame Fontan came up the stairs with the beer bottles in her hands. “Il est catholique,” she said. "My God, Schmidt est catholique."…
“You think he’ll be the President?” Fontan asked.
“No,” I said.
So, Harris skipped a dinner in honor of a guy who was famously rebuffed for the highest office in the land because of rank prejudice, when fighting prejudice, we are told morning, noon and night, is a key animating principle of the Democrat party.
Then, doubling down, she intruded on the dinner with a pre-recorded video message inexplicably featuring a bit by ex-SNL actress, Molly Shannon, playing “Mary Catherine Gallagher,” the very embodiment of Catholic school girl mockery.
That would be akin to Amos ‘n’ Andy introducing a prominent Republican politician at a major black venue in the fifties seeking to garner their support.
Adding insult to injury, last night Candidate Harris did a smiling Trump-mimicking cameo on Saturday Night Live after which host John Mulaney did a riff that, in so many words, said big Catholic families are the last thing we need.
Surreal.
The good news is, we’ll soon find out whether or not, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon, Catholic mothers raise dumb children.
I’m guessing not.
Add to that black mothers and Arab and Muslim mothers and so many other crucial voting blocks, who are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore and we have the makings of a too big to rig landslide.
The one caveat, of course, is the bold deftness with which Democrats do rig.
Still, my gut tells me, Tuesday, it’s “Donald J. Trump: 47th President of the United States.”
Mary Claire Kendall is author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends. The sequel, Oasis of Faith: The Souls Behind the Billboard—Barrymore, Cagney, Tracy, Stewart, Guinness & Lemmon, was just published. Her biography of Ernest Hemingway, titled Hemingway’s Faith, is being published Christmas 2024 by Rowman & Littlefield, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing. She writes a regular bi-monthly column for Aleteia on legends of Hollywood and hidden screen gems.