The road back isn't all that long
51-48. Four more years. Gloom. Doom.

The defeat last week looms large, because of the bare-knuckled way the victors will cash in, if experience is any guide. It was heartbreaking to come back from so far down, to appear to be within reach of a win -- and then lose after all.

But it was still just a three point loss; Kerry came within one state of winning the whole enchilada, "moral values" voters or not. There's no need for Democrats to rend their garments and gnash their teeth. There's just a need to get those three points. (Well, and six Senate seats. And/or a ton of House seats .... rend ... gnash. Where was I?)

Tim Burke -- a sociology professor whose "Easily Distracted" blog is always worth your while -- wrote an impassioned article last week titled "The Road to Victory Goes Through the End of the Democratic Coalition." Contrasting his approach with his friend Russell Arben Fox's (alleged) vision of an "anti-capitalist, protectionist, anti-globalization" coalition, Tim Burke's road "gives up on the red-staters, or at least on the people trapped in old dying rural communities."

Well, that wouldn't be hard, because as far as I can tell, a lot of Democrats never even got started with people and communities like those, let alone do anything to give up on. My point is, let's not give up on people in the red states and counties of this country -- at least not on all of them. Detailed maps of the 2004 election results -- corrected for population density and shaded for percentage instead of winner-take-all blue or red -- show that there were a lot of Kerry votes in nominally red states and red counties.* We needed a few more, that’s all – just 3 percent more nationally , even less than that in Ohio.

And the time to get busy with that is right now, all across the country. I kind of agree with Diana Moon that it would have been better if Kerry had waged a national campaign. (In a subsequent post -- an excellent reader e-mail from Texas -- Moon noticed that Howard Dean appears to agree.) I made a similar point to hers in my volunteer feedback to the Democrats:

I'd also say that [Kerry and Edwards] nearly backed themselves into a minority presidency. I realize resources are limited, but spending time in CA or NY might have jacked up the votes [especially turnout in CA -- ed.] there to make it even closer than 51-48 -- maybe even 49-50. And running ahead in the national polls is worth something, just as being a minority president is worth a little less than otherwise.

Of course, being a minority president is also worth a lot more than being a defeated candidate. I’ll just point out that these things are rarely that cut and dried; once you see your guy is behind in the national polls, you start to pay more attention to why, and things start slipping in the Ohios and Floridas, too.

Anyway, the beauty part is right now that doesn't matter any more -- we have the freedom to wage a national campaign, and we should now. Let's not wait until 2006 or 2008 and be tempted or "forced" to concede whole states and regions to the GOP again.

What I’m not for, and what I sense in a number of “whither Democrats” articles I’ve read, is despair and exhaustion. I sense a tired willingness to give up on a truly national party, and/or a willingness to throw folks off the Democratic sled to keep ahead of the GOP/Christian right wolves -- whether they’re gays looking for full equality, exploited employees looking to organize themselves, or other groups we may not yet even realize are on the menu. The wolves will feast -- and then they’ll keep chasing the rest of us in our weaker sled. Democrats would deserve to go extinct if that happens.

All that said, I’m actually a centrist too on a number of these push-button domestic issues. I prefer cultural evolution to cultural revolution; negotiations to strikes or boycotts; a right to abortions that are safe, legal and rare. The thing to do is see where some give and take is possible on these issues, without either selling out the relatively powerless or conceding whole swathes of the nation to the other side.

The way to do that is to get out there and talk with people, particularly in red states and counties, and prove to more of them that Democrats and liberals are on their side on issues that matter. I'll be sharing some ideas about that soon.


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* Via cousin Kate and blogger Iris; thanks! posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:59:00 AM -- |    

 
A different blue state/red state map
Matt Welch asked for a map of the Tax Foundation data (10/7/2004) comparing federal expenditures by state to tax revenues from that state. Here is one of their FY (fiscal year) 2003 data; red states are those getting $1.06 or more in federal spending for each dollar in federal tax revenues, blue states are those getting $0.94 or less, and white states are getting roughly the same amount, to within 5%.


(Apologies for the fuzzy image; click the map for a better view.)

Hmmm... looks fairly familiar somehow. For some reason I'm reminded of stories about Homeland Security money going to East Nowheresville while New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Chicago go begging... ah, here we go. From "How we got homeland security wrong: The fortification of Wyoming, and other tales from the new front line," by TIME's Amanda Ripley in March of this year:

If all the federal homeland-security grants from last year are added together, Wyoming received $61 a person while California got just $14, according to data gathered at TIME's request by the Public Policy Institute of California, an independent, nonprofit research organization. Alaska received an impressive $58 a resident, while New York got less than $25. On and on goes the upside-down math of the new homeland-security funding.

Wyoming -- how about that, wonder what happened. Glenn, Jeff, PowerLine: please post something our masters and protectors will read and get all this straightened out, OK? After all, we're on the same side.


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EDIT, 11/12: Ms. Ripley wrote the article for 3/29/2004 issue of TIME magazine, not CNN . I found a PPIC publication (Federal Grants and California: Homeland Security, by Tim Ransdell, January 2004) with similar but not identical numbers (WY$56, CA $21, AK $53, NY$24 -- Table C.5, pp.74-75) posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:14:00 AM -- |    

 
Moral values trump strengthlyness
Reliably angry centrist Jeff Jarvis is having none of it -- this whole "moral values" voting thing is a myth:

And one more issue, as Glenn Reynolds points out, is that big media and the left will latch onto this faux statistic to argue that all the people who voted for Bush are actually religious reactionaries, which is unfair to them and ultimately condescending to the electorate and brushes off all the other real issues that voters considered. It's also a tactical mistake, for it only makes it seem as if the religious reactionary fringe is much bigger than it actually it (sic); this complaint only thus gives them more clout in media and politics.

As usual, Glenn is only right when it's all but unavoidable: if anyone ever argued that "all" Bush voters are actually religious reactionaries, that would of course be wrong. The actual argument is that this group gave Bush the essential core group for his victory.

Let's look at the numbers: according to CNN, 22% of voters polled listed "moral values" as their top concern, and 80% of this group voted for Bush. The next highest concerns were the economy (20%; 80% voted for Kerry), terrorism (19%; 86% for Bush), and Iraq (15%; 73% for Kerry). Do the math, and you see that about 18% U.S. voters voted for Bush mainly because of "moral values", while about 16% voted for him mainly because of his perceived edge in fighting terrorism.

The effect is even clearer in Ohio where 20% of Ohio voters chose Bush on the basis of "moral values," compared to the 15% who chose him because terrorism was their main concern. Add in the factor of evangelical volunteer fervor,* and it's clear that the "moral values" crowd won this election for Bush.

Counterarguments
Jarvis has a second line of defense against what he considers the "moral values" fallacy, namely that they're vague and meaningless, and that everybody has moral values. As to the latter, of course, he's right; we urban dwellers often have moral values as nearly fully developed as God-fearing folk anywhere.

But the argument that "moral values" is vague neatly ignores facts: this allegedly vague identifier broke overwhelmingly for Bush. So a group of people with a clearly (self-)definable characteristic -- voting for Bush -- agreed much more often than their Kerry counterparts that this thing called "moral values" was their most important reason for supporting Bush. There's something there. It ain't Iraq, it ain't terrorism, and it ain't vague. It's just undefined by the exit poll.

Now, I'm not completely sure what is meant by "moral values" either (cough homos cough), and more study certainly couldn't hurt (cough getting married free as you please cough). I do know Bush made a pitch for the FMA back in the spring; far from alienating a moderate center of the electorate as I once hoped, the strategems seem to have brought far more of a crucial "moral values" demographic to the polls. That, some nice weekly roundtables at the White House with Christian conservatives* and a round or five of robo-calling that must have cost someone a bit of change.

Folks on the right like John Cole consider this view of the election disproven too. While I intend to read even the unbearably smarmy David Brooks' take that Cole links to, I haven't got through all of them. But here's the key part of one analysis, by Paul Freedman, that Cole cites:

Much has been made of the fact that "moral values" topped the list of voters' concerns, mentioned by more than a fifth (22 percent) of all exit-poll respondents as the "most important issue" of the election. It's true that by four percentage points, people in states where gay marriage was on the ballot were more likely than people elsewhere to mention moral issues as a top priority (25.0 vs. 20.9 percent). But again, the causality is unclear. Did people in these states mention moral issues because gay marriage was on the ballot? Or was it on the ballot in places where people were already more likely to be concerned about morality?

More to the point, the morality gap didn't decide the election. Voters who cited moral issues as most important did give their votes overwhelmingly to Bush (80 percent to 18 percent), and states where voters saw moral issues as important were more likely to be red ones. But these differences were no greater in 2004 than in 2000. If you're trying to explain why the president's vote share in 2004 is bigger than his vote share in 2000, values don't help.

There's a lot to take on here, but in brief: 1) Freedman's suggestion of simultaneous causation (moral issues mentions caused by initiatives? or initiatives caused by moral issues concerns?) is interesting -- but at any rate concedes that this variety of morality drove the vote for this segment of the electorate. 2) The fact, if true, that the "morality gap" was no greater than in 2000 proves next to nothing: (a) it's arguable the "morality gap" helped give Bush the election in 2000 as well, and/or (b) at any rate, it's not the gap, it's the quantity. If "morality gap" voters turned out heavily perhaps even more heavily than in 2000, whether the gap stayed the same width isn't all that important.

That is, even in the (unlikely) event that the anti-gay initiatives themselves added little to turnout or changing voter's minds about their presidential vote, "moral values" voters appear to be one of the largest and most fervent blocks of Bush supporters.

Why all the fuss?
What's at issue is the underlying hierarchy of reasons Bush voters voted as they did, because that shapes the kind of 'mandate' Bush has. As things now stand, and whether his confused anti-terror/pro-Iraq-war allies believe it or not, Bush is likelier to cut and run from Iraq than he is to cut and run from the FMA or bible-thumping judicial appointments. His most numerous and fervent backers care more about the latter, and I assert that Bush's desire to push his domestic agenda is foremost with him, too.

As Michael Kinsley pointed out on the Tavis Smiley Show the other day, the great thing about (relatively) close elections is that everybody's right -- it doesn't take much for your pet hypothesis to provide the straw that broke John Kerry's back. So why are generally sensible if hypermoderate people like Jarvis, and honest if hyperpartisan people like Cole tying themselves in knots to deny the likeliest interpretation of these results?

One explanation is obviously that "moral values" voter undercut the favored tough guy interpretation of Bush's already narrow win -- roughly, anti-terror strengthlyness (TM). Another is that the sub rosa, nudge-nudge-wink-wink style of campaign and coordination with religious leaders* is in itself an indictment of the way Bush campaign and their supporters see democracy -- not an open campaign of ideas, but a process to be gamed away from prying eyes. I may try another time to connect this particular dot with others, like the police-assisted "Miami model" intimidation of protesters at Bush rallies and drive-throughs, or structural shenanigans like the Texas redistricting saga, but for now, see Jonathan Chait.

To me, this looks like more of a "moral values" presidency and political coalition than it is a "terror fightin" one. I hope I'm wrong. But if not, it will be interesting to see which "you just don't get terrorism" libertarians (like Glenn Reynolds, at least nominally), conservatives (like Tacitus), or "Bush Democrats" (like Michael Totten) will realize first that it won't be them, but the Christian right who Bush will "dance with who brung ya" when push comes to shove.

Of course, they could always join Charles Johnson and start banging the "Islam: Religion of Peace" drum. Onward Christian soldiers! It'll be a crusade after all.


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* "Evangelicals Say they led Charge for the GOP," Alan Cooperman and Thomas B. Edsall, Washington Post, 11/8/2004. See also Bush Secured Victory in Florida by Veering From Beaten Path, by Abby Goodnough and Don Van Natta, New York Times, 11/7/2004.
EDITS, 9:45pm: subtitles added, 11/9: minor edits - "compared to", "(sic)", Jarvis link correction. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:50:00 PM -- |