Perhaps a quarter of Americans are ecstatic over the results, almost as many are depressed, but the great majority are convinced it makes little difference to their lives or the leadership of this country.
These are dark days for democracy, for the least and most vulnerable among us, and for Mother Earth herself. If we are lucky enough that Americans will one day be able to read the history of how we overcame our political, class, and racial divisions and became better world citizens, I wonder whether they will read that it was in large part because Catholics, a critical voting bloc, finally came to see the truth of Catholic social teaching, which condemns some of the major tenets of both major parties while challenging each's hypocrisy for claiming that they deserve the Catholic vote. Whether that is through support of a third party or the reform of one or both of the current ones, we desperately need some new options.