A Rose by Any Other Name

Atrios is right in "Values."  Much has been made about how this election was lost on issues of moral values and the election post mortem seems to be focused how the Democrats can better connect with the "moral values" voters.  The answer, is quite simply, they can't.  Nor should they try.  That's because the Democrats didn't lose this election on moral values.  They didn't even lose it on the tiny subset of tenets held by the Religious Right (also known as the Republican Party) that Karl & Co., with the aide of the liberal media, ginned up in order to get the crazies to the polls.

Back in the real world, we all know that wanting to help those less fortunate is a moral value.  We know that wanting to provide all Americans with a basic standard of health care is a moral value.  We know that being straight with the public before starting a war is a moral value.  But that's not what the values voters were voting on.  They were voting on gays and abortion.  The question is why is this an issue.

This becomes more intriguing when you read what Josh Marshall  has to say.  The red states aren't any more "moral" than the blue states.  Not when you're talking about abstract, "liberal" notions of morality like those mentioned above nor when you're talking about more specific Christian notions of morality, such as divorce or out of wed-lock births.  The rate of divorce in particular is low in many blue states, such as say, well, I don't know, Massachusetts.  But as has been pointed out, nobody was making an issue of reducing the divorce rate or rate of single parenthood in this election.  In the whole "a marriage is between a man and a woman" portion of presidential programming we didn't hear Georgie Boy once talk about how this related to divorce or out of wedlock births.  That's because, quite simply, red America has nothing to get uppitty about on these issues - they're all single and pregnant or divorced.  The moral values crowd wasn't really about moral values, and it wasn't even about Christian values.  It was about getting on one's high horse and feeling superior.

We've read lots and lots of articles and listen to lots and lots of conservative pundits talk about how the coastal liberal elites condescend to real Americans with real values.  Notwithstanding that it's pretty fucking condescending when somebody tells me, I'm not a real American because I live in New York, this is clearly bullshit.  The red states that aren't in the process of becoming blue states are pissed because the world has passed them by.  They are less educated than the blue states, they are less wealthy than the blue states and they just generally get less attention than the blue states.  They're jealous.  They're not even any more "moral" in the conventional sense or in the Christian sense.  But god damn it, they're not as gay as we are and when their teenage daughters get knocked up, she's gonna have the kid.  The Republicans recognized this deeply felt resentment in red American.  They tapped into it by telling them they have "values" because they're not gay and they don't have abortions.  That's why they're better than us.  Lots of red America is looking for an excuse to lash out against blue America, and these "values" give them an excuse.  The Democrats can't woo their votes, because they're not available to be wooed.  The Democrats can start talking about values for the next four years, and then sometime in March 2008, somebody in RNC headquarters will come up with another reason why we're heathens and the people of South Carolina aren't.

There is a division in America, and the blue states are on one side and the red states, specifially the south and the plains are on another side.  Their half is bigger right now, so to speak.  This is obviously a generalization, and there is tremendous variety amongst voters in the blue and red states, but I think these issues are pervasive in quite a bit of  red America.  The Democrats aren't going to get anywhere trying to win their votes because their votes are not available to us.  Better to try to win the votes of the people that  aren't looking for a reason to hate us.  I guaranty the voters in the red states that are open to voting Democrat weren't the ones that voted on "values" this time.  We didn't lose the election because we couldn't attract the "values" crowd.  We lost because we didn't present a compelling enough message to attract enough of the others.