By Dave Andrusko
Vice President Joe Biden being interviewed by
Father Matt Malone, S.J., editor in chief of America magazine.
We’ve written about it for months, so the latest numbers from the Bloomberg Poll are no surprise to NRL News Today readers. The headline is, “Bloomberg Poll: Joe Biden Now Top Presidential Choice for 1 in 4 Democrats.”
To be clear, fellow pro-abortionist Hillary Clinton remains the top choice of registered voters with 33%. The numbers of Vermont’s Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders have risen as well but he is third with 23% compared to Vice President Biden’s 25%.
But these numbers attest to the former Secretary of State’s fall from electoral grace. Once the beneficiary of stratospherically high numbers, Clinton has slipped to a third at the same time voters’ confidence in her trustworthiness, leadership qualities, and basic honesty continues to plummet. Bloomberg adds
Adding to the good news for the vice president: His favorability ratings are on the rise. Since the last Bloomberg poll in April, Clinton’s favorability ratings have dropped 10 points, from 48 percent to 38 percent. Biden’s 49 percent favorable score represents a 3-point uptick. He was the only one of a dozen national political figures and entities whose approval rating improved over the summer.
In light of his growing popularity, even though he has not decided whether to run for President, it’s worth reading an interview Mr. Biden gave to America magazine, in which he offered some thoughts on abortion and pro-lifers in the context of his Catholic faith and as a leading Democrat. (America is a national Catholic weekly magazine published by the Jesuits in the United States.)
The interview was conducted by Father Matt Malone, S.J., editor in chief of America, on September 17 and placed online September 21.
From our single-issue purposes, Fr. Malone began by lobbing a slow pitch right over the heart of the plate that Biden cheerfully clobbered.
And yet there have been times, when talking about specific public policies, where you’ve had to take positions that were at odd with the bishops of this country on contentious questions like abortion. Has that been hard for you?
(Never mind that unfettered abortion is “hard” on the unborn.)
In the full transcript provided by America, Biden rambled this way and that, with allusions to Thomas Aquinas and Summa Theological and Pope Benedict. Here’s how he began:
“It has been, it has been hard in one sense, because I’m prepared to accept de fide doctrine on a whole range of issues as a Catholic… I’m prepared to accept as a matter of faith, my wife and I, my family, [the Church’s teaching on] the issue of abortion.”
But, he added, he is not prepared to “impose” what Biden labeled
“a precise view, that is born out of my faith, on other people who are equally Godfearing, equally as committed to life, equally as committed to the sanctity of life. I’m prepared to accept that at the moment of conception there’s human life and being, but I’m not prepared to say that to other Godfearing, nonGodfearing people that have a different view.”
And then, perhaps in a back-handed reference to a comment made to Pastor Rick Warren by President Obama when he was running for his first term, Biden added, “I don’t want to start a theological discussion, I’ll get in trouble, it’s above my pay grade.”
Aware that increasingly fewer and fewer pro-lifers call the Democratic Party home, Fr. Malone asked, “Is there a place in the Democratic Party for people who are prolife?”
Mr. Biden’s 15-word response?
Absolutely. Absolutely, positively. And that’s been my position for as long as I’ve been engaged.
And if you believe that….