Despite vastly outspending her opponent and drafting a galaxy of celebrities to her cause - Jennifer Lopez, Oprah Winfrey, Ricky Martin, Taylor Swift - Democratic candidate Kamala Harris lost the Electoral College, the popular vote and all the swing states.

This has bewildered and dismayed liberals - and much of the mainstream media. In the aftermath, progressive Senator Bernie Sanders excoriated the Democratic Party machine.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," he said.

He continued: "Unbelievably, real, inflation-accounted-for weekly wages for the average American worker are actually lower now than they were 50 years ago.

Harris ran a campaign straight out of the centrist political playbook. Sanders observed that the 60% of Americans who live pay cheque to pay cheque weren't convinced by it.

She sought to dampen social divisions rather than accentuate them. She spoke of harmony, kindness and future prosperity, of middle-class aspiration rather than poverty and suffering. Her speeches often repeated rhetoric like her promise to be "laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class".

This was unlikely to endear her to those for whom social mobility appears impossible.

Words of blood and thunder resonated

Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, refuted Sanders' claims, saying:

"[Joe] Biden was the most pro-worker president of my lifetime - saved union pensions, created millions of good paying jobs and even marched in a picket line."

But did those workers feel like the Democrats were speaking to them? And did they like what they heard?

Class politics needs to not only promise to redistribute wealth, but do so in a language that chimes with people's lived experience - more effectively than Trump's right-wing populism.

Harris's genial, smiling optimism failed to strike a chord with voters hurting from years of inflation and declining real wages.

And her use of celebrity advocates echoes writer Jeff Sparrow's criticism of the left as "too often infatuated with the symbolic power of celebrity gestures" after Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential election loss.

By contrast, Trump's words of blood and thunder hit the spot - not only in his rural and outer suburban strongholds, but among those voters in rust-belt inner cities, who had voted decisively for Biden four years earlier.

The greatest threat to America, he said, was from "the enemy from within". He defined them as: "All the scum that we have to deal with that hate our country; that's a bigger enemy than China and Russia."

Harris's attempt to build her campaign around social movements of gender and race failed abjectly.

In particular, the appeal to women on reproductive rights, and to minority voters by preaching racial harmony resonated less than Trump's emphasis on law and order and border control.

Women voted more strongly for Harris than for Trump, but not in sufficient numbers to get her into the Oval Office. Latinos flocked to Trump despite his promises to deport undocumented immigrants.

This shows it takes more than political rhetoric to bake people into voting blocs.

Those of us who fixate on politics and the news media tend to overread the ability of public debate to set political agendas, especially during election campaigns.

In fact, few voters pay much attention to politics. They rarely watch, listen to or read mainstream media and have little political content in their social media news feeds. Exit polls indicate Trump led with these kinds of voters.

Is populism the new class?

In much of the Western world, class has receded from the political vocabulary. As manufacturing industries declined, so did the old trade unions whose base was among blue-collar workers.

In 1983, 20.1 percent of Americans were union members. In 2023, membership had halved to 10%. Few of those in service jobs join unions, largely because many are precariously employed.

These days, politicians in the old social democratic parties, like the Democrats in the US and Labor here in Australia, are much more likely to have come up through law and business than the union movement.

In the US, ex-teacher Tim Walz was the first candidate on a Democratic Party presidential ticket without law school experience since Jimmy Carter.

The language of populism - the people versus the elites - is a smokescreen that obscures real structures of power and inequality. But it comes much more easily to the lips of Americans than that of class.

Trump's political cunning rests in his ability to identify as one of the people, even to paint the left as the enemy of disenfranchised so-called patriots.

"We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country," he told a Veteran's Day rally last year.

He conjures up (an illusory) golden age of prosperity in a once-great monocultural America, where jobs were protected by tariffs and crime was low, helped by the reality of rising cost of living and falling real wages.

There is plenty of room on this nostalgic landscape for Mister Moneybags, an old-fashioned tycoon, even one with the "morals of an alley cat", as Joe Biden said in the debate that finished his 2024 candidacy.

The elite, by contrast, are faceless: politicians, bureaucrats, the "laptop class", as Elon Musk calls knowledge workers, and the grey cardinals of the "deep state" (a conspiratorial term for the American federal bureaucracy).

According to Trump's narrative, they conspire in the shadows to rob decent, hardworking folk of their livelihoods. This accords with a real geographical divide: people in cities with high incomes and valuable real estate, and those in the rust-belt with neither.

Australian populism

In Australia, the language of populism has deeper roots than that of class. Students of Australian history learn that national identity was based on distinguishing ourselves from the crusty traditions of the motherland: the belief that, as historian Russel Ward wrote, all Australians should be treated equally, that "Jack is as not only as good as his master … but probably a good deal better".

The Australian Labor Party was there when this egalitarian myth was born. But as the gap between rich and poor grows here, as elsewhere, it has become less plausible than once it was.

It remains to be seen whether Anthony Albanese - whose life journey has taken him from social housing to waterfront mansion - is prepared to bring the sharp elbows of class politics, in both policy and language, to next year's election campaign.

The experience of Kamala Harris suggests he would be well advised to do so.

• First published in The Conversation
• George H Morgan is Associate Professor Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University

Exit polls conducted by the Washington Post, NBC News and the Associated Press reveal that Trump claimed roughly 56% of the Catholic vote compared to Harris' 41%, a 15-point lead in key swing states.

According to the Washington Post, this outcome marks a notable departure from the 2020 election where Trump led Joe Biden among Catholic voters by only five points.

Trump's ability to gain traction among Catholics reflects an appeal to voters with traditional values, particularly on abortion and immigration.

The Associated Press VoteCast poll shows that 90% of voters who believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases supported Trump. In comparison, Harris retained 69% of voters in favour of more liberal abortion policies.

Additionally, Trump held a 25-point lead among Catholics on immigration and a 19-point lead on the economy, topics that resonated with a demographic historically split between the two main parties.

Generational shift

According to Massimo Faggioli, professor of Historical Theology at Villanova University, Trump's strong support among Catholics represents a generational shift.

"The cultural and ethnic diversification of American Catholics does not mean they automatically align with the 'diversity party'" he explained.

"There are fewer Catholics in the USA that look like Biden and (former Speaker of the House Nancy) Pelosi" Faggioli argued.

Faggioli also noted that Trump reached out to Catholics in the country "in a way that the Harris-Walz campaign did not". For instance, Donald Trump chose a Catholic convert as Vice-President, JD Vance.

Ideological rifts

Looking ahead, some analysts speculate on the broader implications of a second Trump presidency for US Catholics.

Faggioli predicts further ideological rifts within the Catholic community, with debates likely to centre on immigration, climate change and other social issues.

The response of US bishops to Trump's policies will be closely observed, especially given their past criticisms of Biden's stance on abortion.

According to the Washington Post poll, non-Catholic Christians also voted in strong numbers for Trump (62%). On the other hand, Jews (79%), other believers (60%) and non-religious (72%) supported Harris.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

La Croix International

CathNews New Zealand

In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), Wallnau claimed that the vice president used supernatural manipulation to gain the upper hand in her combative showdown with the former president.

"When I say 'witchcraft,' I am talking about what happened tonight. Occult-empowered deception, manipulation, and domination," Wallnau wrote early Wednesday morning, following the debate.

Wallnau, a prominent figure in the pro-Trump evangelical movement, has long portrayed the former president as a divinely chosen leader tasked with saving America from what he describes as a spiritual and political decline. Continue reading

It marks the end of a generation of Catholics in politics, those who arrived on the national political scene in the wake of World War II and the GI Bill of the Kennedys and Vatican II.

They were finally able to leave behind the marginalisation of the "papists" from the mainstream, where American Protestantism and the liberal establishment dominated, making the idea of a Catholic in the White House uncomfortable, to say the least.

Thanks to the presidency of John F. Kennedy and Biden, there are no longer suspicions about Catholics' loyalties.

But questions about the real content of liberal democracy today have ecumenically spread beyond the confines of Catholicism.

The end of an era

It's the end of an era that had begun some time ago and is now coming to pass.

The most evident change is that America is no longer, such as during the time of Kennedy, a "three-religion country" of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

Catholics hold 29 percent of the seats in the 117th Congress, but it's not necessarily a growing influence. It's more than the disappearance, in the last two decades, of pro-life Catholic politicians among the Democrats.

The focus on "social justice" has often swallowed up the rest of the Catholic imagination on the political and ecclesial left, and this has given space to a deep-seated revanchism from fellow Catholics on the right.

The fact that there is a majority of Catholic justices on the US Supreme Court today has not exactly benefited the credentials for the democratic culture of Catholicism in America.

Parallels have been drawn, both in America and at the Vatican, between Biden's decision and the late Pope Benedict XVI's resignation in 2013.

Besides the differences, especially in the freedom with which that decision was taken, there is the fact that, unlike Benedict XVI, Biden leaves no epigones, much less a Catholic movement behind him.

There are Catholics among the younger generations of Democrats in politics, but their Catholicism plays a more marginal role in their personal identity and political values.

The rift and the void

The void that Biden leaves behind is bigger than the rift with the majority of Catholic bishops on the issue of abortion as well as gender, and that made many of them quietly or openly favor Trump in the previous election.

Some bishops became even quieter - actually silent - when the former president and his cabal tried to overturn the results of the elections between November 2020 and January 2021.

That rift between Biden and the bishops on the admission to Communion for Catholics in public office who support legislation permitting abortion, euthanasia, or other moral evils did not become formal-sacramental.

That was thanks in part to the extraordinary intervention of the Vatican in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in May 2021.

However, it has never truly healed.

New era

Biden's exit marks a change in internal relations within US. Catholicism.

It is not simply the disappearance of conciliar Catholicism in favor of anti-conciliar Catholicism in a neo-conservative or traditionalist fashion.

The National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis (July 17-21 quite different from the previous one, in Minneapolis in 1941) has shown how the triad doctrine-life-worship of US Catholicism is a complex mixture.

It involves: forgetfulness (sometimes outright rejection) of Vatican II but also an anonymous reception of it; Catholic pride but also embrace of styles of worship that have a lot in common with American Protestant revivalism; quest for interior peace but also drive for emotional entertainment shareable on social media.

The push to include ecclesial identities other than the Irish and continental European ones, which have dominated for a century and a half, now finds support.

That support is not only in theological progressivism descending from the Enlightenment but also in the globalised traditionalism of the ethno-culturalist brand.

Certainly, an illiberal traditionalism is very active and well-funded in the United States, both at the theological and political level.

But the situation is more complicated and must be seen honestly in the context of the crisis of progressive Catholicism, the "spirit of Vatican II" Catholics, even in Europe.

This recent phase of identity-driven secularisation has created a void that was filled by intellectual, ecclesial, and ecclesiastical forces that cater to the post-modern self with ready-made answers (simplified as much as you want).

They appeal to the younger generations more directly than the ones projected by academic and collegiate Catholicism (to which I belong as a member of the professoriate).

A Catholic like J.D. Vance, Trump's choice for vice president, exemplifies a generation of post-liberal, anti-"woke" political-intellectual operatives who constantly shift ideologies in an attempt to define family, community, and polity — without paying much attention to Catholic social thought.

Biden's departure is certainly the end of an era but for reasons beyond the lack of a generation of Catholic politicians on the left.

It's a discontinuity that has to do with the interruption in the transmission of Vatican II Catholicism, in its comprehensive "catholicity," in many quarters of the Church in the United States, especially in the seminaries for the formation of the clergy.

Indeed, US militant and conservative Catholicism has largely cut its ties with the theology of Vatican II, but this is not just an American problem.

What is happening in the United States could be a good opportunity to look also into the Catholic Church in Europe, which is largely in denial.

What is happening in American politics with the retirement of a "Vatican II Catholic" like Joe Biden and the emergence of a politically expedient "cultural Catholicism" is also happening in Italian politics, for example.

As seen from the Vatican

The new configuration of the American electoral campaign opens two fronts of uncertainty for the Vatican.

With Biden's exit, Pope Francis loses a predictable interlocutor on internal issues and a reliable one on international issues (despite the differences in opinions and policies about Ukraine and Israel).

The post-Biden Democratic Party will be more distant from Rome and Europe: today's America is no longer an extension of the old continent, the last province of the Roman Empire of the neo-conservative dreams.

The relationship between a Trump-Vance administration and the Vatican (migration and environmental policies, Ukraine, Israel, China) is anyone's guess.

But it also opens an internal front within the Church, with the Vatican grappling with two different and opposing radicalisms (in different ways) on the abortion issue and on gender.

Culture war

If Kamala Harris were to be dragged into culture war fights, this might influence her relations with the Catholic Church both domestically and internationally and deteriorate the alignment with the Vatican that Biden was able to create and keep.

Some US bishops probably felt orphaned by the new GOP that, in its platform for the 2024 elections, demoted the abortion issue: the 2022 "Dobbs" ruling of the Supreme Court transformed the pro-life cause into an electoral liability in many districts.

But if Harris campaigns as a culture warrior, it is predictable that even more bishops will return to placing their hopes in the Republican Party, which has become a risk to the survival of constitutional democracy in America.

If Trump is elected, J.D. Vance could become the highest-ranking Catholic in a post-democratic or authoritarian United States.

One of the paradoxes of this American moment is that it was a Catholic president, Joe Biden, who in 2020-2021 helped save American democracy, which, at least until Kennedy and Vatican II, Catholics were accused of not believing in.

Now, the relationship between the political cultures of US Catholicism and American democracy enters a new territory.

• First published in La Croix
• Massimo Faggioli is an Italian academic, Church historian, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, columnist for La Croix International, and contributing writer to Commonweal.

Making history

Today, she is one step closer to making history again.

On Sunday, July 21, President Joe Biden ended his bid for a second term amid concerns from within their party that he would be unable to defeat Republican Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden's departure frees his delegates to vote for whomever they choose.

Ms. Harris, whom Mr. Biden backed after ending his candidacy, is thus far the only declared candidate. Should she secure the Democratic nomination, she would be the first Black woman to lead a major party ticket.

Few, if any, presidential candidates have had as much exposure to the world's religions as Kamala Harris, the 59-year-old vice president from California.

Harris' ethnic, racial and cultural biography represents a slice of the U.S. population that is becoming ascendant but that has never been represented in the nation's highest office.

Harris and her faith

Here are five faith facts about Harris:

She was raised on Hinduism and Christianity.

Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was from Chennai, India; her father, Donald Harris, from Jamaica. The two met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her name, Kamala, means "lotus" in Sanskrit, and is another name for the Hindu goddess Lakshmi. She visited India multiple times as a girl and got to know her relatives there.

But because her parents divorced when she was 7, she also grew up in Oakland and Berkeley attending predominantly Black churches.

Her downstairs neighbor, Regina Shelton, often took Kamala and her sister Maya to Oakland's 23rd Avenue Church of God in Oakland. Harris now considers herself a Black Baptist.

She is married to a Jewish man.

Harris met her husband, Los Angeles lawyer Douglas Emhoff, on a blind date in San Francisco. They married in 2014. At their wedding, the couple smashed a glass to honor Emhoff's upbringing (a traditional Jewish wedding custom).

It was Harris' first marriage and his second.

An article in the Jewish press described her imitation of her Jewish mother-in-law, Barbara Emhoff, as "worthy of an Oscar."

She was criticised for not proactively assisting in civil cases against Catholic clergy sex abuse during the years she served as a prosecutor.

After graduating from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, Harris specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and child exploitation as a young prosecutor.

But two investigations by The Intercept and The Associated Press found that Harris was consistently silent on the Catholic Church's abuse scandal — first as San Francisco district attorney and later as California's attorney general. Read more

• Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.