Bad stuff. But whatever the role of anti-Catholic sentiment in that race, Smith's performance was really a huge improvement over what the Democrats did in 1924:
That year the Cox-Roosevelt ticket secured just 34 (!) percent of the popular vote, to 60 percent for Warren Harding. That was a blowout on the scale of Nixon in '72 or Johnson in '64. Judis acknowledges in his piece that no Democrat could have won in 1928, but you really need to look at the 1924 and 1920 races to appreciate how true that was. It's not just that Smith couldn't have won irrespective of his religion, but that the inter-war Democratic Party was absolutely hopeless in presidential politics. That's a very different context from the one in which Barack Obama is currently operating.
Long story short, I think it's true that Obama will be hurt in the fall by his race, but he's also operating in an environment where Democrats have some margin for error. Al Smith, by contrast, was operating from a position of hopeless disadvantage that had nothing to do with his religion.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/06/party-like-its-1928/45225/
