One young voter agreed that the pro-abortion platform and rhetoric from Democratic circles was toxic to many Democrats and Republicans.
"The abortion plank of the platform was a figurative middle finger, not only to the 21 million plus pro-life Democrats, but also to those who vote Republican purely because of abortion and the tens of millions of other Democrats who favor some restrictions on abortion," Robert Christian, editor of Millennial journal, told CNA/EWTN News.
"In a tight election, a lot of things would have pushed Hillary over the top, but we can be certain that abortion absolutism was one that cost her the election," he added.
Christian said that he heard "from dozens upon dozens of fellow pro-life Democrats and progressives" and "young Catholics who sincerely believe in Catholic moral and social teaching" who could not vote for Hillary due to her pro-abortion policies and rhetoric.
Others complained that the Clinton campaign had overlooked certain religious voters. For example, Clinton lost White Catholics to Trump by 23 points, the largest margin of defeat for that voting bloc for a major presidential candidate since at least the 2000 election. Clinton lost Catholics overall by seven percent.
Michael Wear tweeted on Thursday that "The most basic understanding of religious demographics in America suggested Trump's only path to victory was Rust Belt White Catholics."
Wear also implied that the Democrats' support for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment hurt their standing with Evangelical voters.
"I believe there was an absolute failure to reach out to people of faith by the Clinton campaign," Christian said, noting that Clinton "rarely talked" about her faith.
"It is tough to overstate how foolish this decision was," he added.
"Bourgeois liberalism, rooted in enlightened self-interest, social libertarianism, and technocratic pragmatism, is not the right answer to populist nationalism."
"Democrats need to recommit to solidarity, human dignity, and genuine human equality and rebuild the party around a shared vision of social, economic, and global justice; this can only be done by working with religious humanists of all faith traditions to rebuild the party from the ground up."
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Christopher Hale, executive director of the group Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, tweeted that last year, "one Dem official told me that they were going to pursue a 'post-Christian' outreach strategy."
"That worked well," he tweeted sarcastically.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.