Hard to imagine the past behavior of some priests, along with the apparent lack of screening and forceful removal of those who were degenerate, had nothing to do with this current situation.
Old news. In case you haven't been paying attention, the vast majority of the abuse took place over 20 years ago, and those priests HAVE been dealt with, either by the legal authorities, or in cases where the Statute of Limitations ran out, by the Church itself. This new group of Bishops has no tolerance for the pervs, and have been working to change Seminaries, wresting them from the liberals who had been running them for years.
There might have been some backlash for that situation in this election, but I don't think it was that much. I believe it was 'genetic Democrats', who hadn't had someone in the past few elections who excited them enough to bring them back to the Party, and Obama was that person. As I mentioned in a previous post, some Catholics I've talked to who voted for Obama did so because of the economy. I'm not even sure they knew what his stance on abortion actually was. All they saw was 'change', and they believed the Republicans caused the economic crisis, not the Democrats.