Morning Briefing

“The Democrats won and Donald Trump lost” in yesterday’s midterm elections, said columnist Michael Sean Winters, but it wasn’t the blue wave some hoped for. Abortion, he said, is still a big issue for many Catholic voters, and he recommends Peter Steinfels’ column in the Washington Post as required reading for all Dems. But elections will be won on economic, not social, issues, he said.

The Democrats’ takeover of the House of Representatives included wins by Catholic candidates, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York and Mary Gay Scanlon in Pennsylvania. A record number of women were elected to the House, including the first two Muslim women in Congress and the first two Native women.

But some high-profile Catholics lost their races, most notably Beto O’Rourke’s longshot attempt to unseat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, where NCR’s Maria Benevento reported about attempts to encourage Latinos to vote.

Prolife Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly lost in Indiana and Danny O’Connor lost his attempt to flip Ohio’s 12^th district, where I had reported about the division in “50/50 land.” Catholic Mike DeWine, a Republican, won the Ohio governorship.

The Dems did flip Iowa’s 1^st District, where NCR’s Brian Roewe found a majority of voters opposed Trump’s tariffs, although some farmers were willing to give Trump some time.

Did the “nuns on the bus” have an effect? Global Sisters Report’s Michele Morek thinks so. During her two weeks on the bus, she heard from many Americans worried about how the president’s tax cuts hurt the middle class and working people.

Although there were some victories against NRA-backed candidates, the Parkland students who had campaigned in the aftermath of the school shooting that killed 17 of their classmates, were discouraged with pro-gun wins for Senate and governor in their state of Florida.