Republicans have ceded the ground on faith

But Trump’s approach does leave Democrats with an opening on religion. Clinton’s choice of Tim Kaine as her running mate is effective counterprogramming. Republican senators I talked with describe Kaine as “very bright,” “genuinely nice” and “unfailingly courteous and positive.” But he is also known as “faith-oriented” and a “deeply spiritual guy.” Kaine is not only fluent in Spanish; he speaks the language of Catholic social thought, in the dialect of Pope Francis.

There is reason to think that Catholics — who often have a positive view of immigration and seek a moral context for their political choices — might be open to Democratic outreach. In 2012, President Obama won the Catholic vote narrowly, 50 percent to 48 percent. A recent poll had Clinton beating Trump among Catholics 56 percent to 39 percent. And it is not just Latino Catholics who have found Trump’s message off-putting. “The Republican Party has left me by embracing Donald Trump,” says George Weigel, a leading Catholic conservative, “a man utterly unfit by experience, intellect, or character to be president of the United States.”

Weigel will not end up supporting Clinton, but other Catholics might, especially if she can find some comfortable religious language, emerging from her United Methodist tradition. “This does matter to her,” says a longtime associate. “But it is a root canal for her to talk about it.”