The Catholic Temptation
Step inside the world of a Biden campaign ad, and you’ll find a young Joey going up to bat in his front yard here in Scranton, Pennsylvania, decked out in his baseball uniform while a baby stands in a crib nearby. Women in ’50s-era hats and colorful skirt suits walk up the sidewalk to church. Biden’s dad calls him “champ” and dispenses attaboy wisdom: “When you get knocked down, get up.”
Selling America on this Irish Catholic Lake Wobegon—a place where family comes first, everyone’s middle class, and all of the kids learn the same basic values from the wise nuns around the corner—is how Biden hopes to win the 2020 election.Toss-up states such as Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are roughly one-quarter Catholic, and many of these Catholics are white voters who abandoned their longtime affiliation with the Democratic Party to support Donald Trump in 2016. Biden’s campaign sees his religious identity as a huge advantage in his bid to win those voters back: Trump and his associates “look down their nose on people like Irish Catholics, like me, [who] grew up in Scranton,” Biden said during the first presidential debate.
During Joe’s early Scranton years, the Biden family actually did live around the block from the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of
