As promised, I'll have more to say on my own opinions in a bit. Until then here's a wrap up of the best the blogsphere has to offer...
Chris Suellentrop (Slate's deputy Washington bureau chief):
| My take on the election: Vision without details beats details without vision. |
William Saletan (Slate's chief political correspondent):
| Go back to being the party of responsibility.
I'm not talking about scolding people. I'm talking about rewarding them. Be the party that rewards ordinary people who do what they're supposed to do—and protects them from those who don't. If you think this kind of moral talk is anathema, you're the sort of person Karl Rove wants to be running the Democratic Party. Get out, or get a new attitude. Nearly 60 million people came out to vote for George W. Bush yesterday because they think that he represents their values and that you don't. Prove them wrong and you'll be the majority party again. How? Start by changing the way you talk about pocketbook issues. Remember Bill Clinton's commitment to help people who "work hard and play by the rules"? Your positions on taxes and labor would be assets instead of liabilities if you explained them in moral terms. The minimum wage rewards work. Repealing the estate tax helps rich people get richer without risk or effort. Lax corporate oversight allows big businesses to evade taxes, deceive small investors, and raid pension funds. Yes, Republicans will accuse you of waging a class war. I can see you cringing already. Get off your knees and fight. It is a war, but it isn't a class war. It's a culture war, and if you talk about it that way, you'll win it. Some of you are dismayed by the emergence of a huge voting bloc of churchgoers. Stop viewing this as a threat, and start viewing it as an opportunity. Socially conservative blue-collar workers don't believe in the free market. They believe in the work ethic. Bush wins their votes by equating the free market with the work ethic. Show them where the free market betrays the work ethic, and they'll vote for the party of the work ethic—you—against the party of the free market. |
Robert B. Reich (former secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton):
| I don't think most Americans rejected John Kerry's policies. They just didn't pay much attention to them. It was Bush's moral vision they found more compelling. Kerry kept saying he had a "plan" for the economy and a "plan" for health care and a "plan" for fighting terrorists. The problem is, when politicians talk about having a plan for this or a policy for that, people just don't believe it. One of the legacies of the last 40 years of mounting distrust in government is that politicians with "plans" and "policies" are immediately discounted. Plans and policies sound like meaningless blather. But when political leaders speak with righteous indignation—with passion and conviction about what is morally right to do or morally offensive—they can inspire. Kerry was correct on policy, but his policies didn't inspire. Bush was wrong on policy, but he had a moral vision and he exuded righteous indignation. He did inspire.
..snip.. Democrats used to talk in moral terms—about fighting for civil rights, for example. What should Democrats say now and in the future about public morality? That it's morally wrong to give huge tax cuts to the rich while cutting social programs for the poor and working class—especially when the gap between the rich and everyone else is wider than it's been in more than a century. That we have a moral obligation to give every American child a good education and decent health care. That it's morally wrong that millions of Americans who work full time don't earn enough to keep their families out of poverty. That corporate executives who steal money from their investors and employees are morally reprehensible. And that it's morally wrong to kill over a hundred thousand Iraqis and send over a thousand young Americans to their deaths for a cause that is still undefined, in a war that was unnecessary. ..snip.. Which gets me to the issue of faith. Democrats need to talk more about it, and inspire more of it. But here again, I don't mean the Republican or right-wing evangelical version—faith in a particular religion or god, faith in final judgment. I mean the sort of faith on which all social progress has been based, and must be based—an irrational faith that it is possible, by working together, to create a more just nation and a more just world. This sort of faith is entirely irrational—it defies reason—in the sense that it's often impossible to find hard evidence to justify it. It requires a great leap into the unknown and unknowable. It necessitates boundless energy and absurd optimism even in the darkest times. But without such faith, progress toward a just society is not possible. |
Steven Waldman (editor in chief and CEO of Beliefnet):
| What about the God talk? As I've argued often in these pages in the past, the Democrats need to be able to speak about faith in a way that doesn't seem phony and alien. Perhaps the most telling moment was during the Democratic Convention when, in the midst of a very good riff on his faith, Kerry declared, "We welcome people of faith." It sounded like he was the leader of a secular party graciously opening the doors to strangers.
Democratic politicians should never forget something simple: Most Republicans and most Democrats are religious. Using faith language is not just about sucking up to their voters, it's about talking to your own base, too—and those Catholics who abandoned the party this year. On some level, the hardest thing that Democratic leaders, activists, and journalists have to do is honestly ask themselves this: Do you hold very religious people in contempt? If you do, religious people will sense it—and will vote against you. And there are more of them than there are of you. |
Walter Dellinger (partner at O'Melveny & Myers in Washington, D.C.):
| Robert Reich has the best ideas I've seen. It is interesting to me that the heart of his insight (and Steve Waldman's) was put forth early in the morning after the election by my strongly Democratic sister, Barbara Dellinger, who has worked tirelessly for Catholic social justice movements since retiring as a neighborhood poverty worker and county Head Start director in Charlotte. Her first reaction to the election:
When I was driving home at 8:30 last night from the polls, I heard on the radio that the exit polls were reporting that 20-plus percent listed "moral values" as their top concern when voting. I immediately knew that this was bad for Kerry. How in the world have the national Democrats that I grew up with—who knew that segregation was wrong—who stood up for migrant workers—who believed in the dignity of man—the dignity of work—ever let the Republicans get the high road on moral values … making us "second-class" moral value citizens. We have to take back this issue. Sister, you're right again |
| At the time, I was struck not so much by what he said but by its scripted delivery, as if he were reading from the tablets. His opposition to gay marriage had a brittle quality, the same "because I said so" entitlement of the white supremacists of my segregated youth who insisted that blacks had to "earn" their rights: He did not want to give "social approval" to homosexuality. Like the constitutional rationales for state-sponsored racism, the bans on gay rights will fall under the weight of their own hypocrisy. (Plus the fact that gays are born into the most unsuspecting of families, like the Cheneys.) My advice to the Dems on the gay marriage fight: Don't. Fall. For. It. Take the civil unions, and punt—hold Bush to one of the more astonishing and under-reported flip-flops of his campaign, when he casually disavowed the radical civil-union ban on the Ohio ballot that would get him elected. Besides, Rove is already trolling for the next new gimmick in the Southern strategy.
What the Democrats should do instead is address the noble impulse behind the bigotry masked as "morality"—and break the code of the Republicans' fraudulent claims on piety. As Robert Wright points out, the moral terrain that we should all stake and reform is what he calls MTV-land. This is a genuine threat to the "fabric of our society," and as the mother of teenage daughters, I feel it every day: the casual pornography that is the media wallpaper of my girls' childhood. But instead of focusing the outrage at Britney, let's turn the TV dial over to Fox, where the true pop icon of the Bush era resides. Paris Hilton, the amateur porn star and N-word user, has made a TV career of ridiculing the Simple Life of the "ordinary Americans" the Democrats have so alienated. Her reality show is brought to you, of course, by the very corporate interests the Republicans are servicing, and the network that broadcasts it belongs to Bush's very own media commissar, Rupert Murdoch. If the Democrats can find a way to demonstrate who profits from the circus of Paris Hilton, then they may be able to point out the greater menace to the American family: the ringmasters' embarrassment of the middle class with an ever diminishing share of the bread. |
| You see, despite our personal differences on matters of faith and religion, we believe that in order to be good disciples of Jesus, you have to not only know his words but also perform his deeds. That is where we draw the line with those who spend hours and hours in church, only to come out and hate everyone around them.
Our parents and grandparents raised us on Christian faith. It is that faith that got me into politics, and it is that faith that has proved strong enough to sustain me in these challenging times. Grandma once said, "When you've done all that you can do, you must stand … stand for something." Today, as liberals, as Democrats, and as progressive voters, we must acknowledge with humility that what we stand for no longer resonates with a sizeable chunk of voting Americans. Democrats must speak in a language that allows all voters to know we share their outlook for a strong and prosperous country, we respect their values of tolerance, but our leaders are in public office to help make things better for us all—not worse. A white factory worker or waitress with no health care should not be voting for a party that traditionally sides against their economic interests. My family, who is part of the working poor, unemployed, and middle class, placed their trust in a party that wanted to improve the quality of their life. They believed Kerry would and could do better than President Bush. This is a new moment to identify and recruit better messengers. Perhaps it's time to tap into the "Obama" factor: Scour statehouses for young, energetic, inspiring, and emerging leaders with the ability to connect the head and heart. Too many of the old Democratic guard have stayed in Washington, D.C., too long to fully recognize how most Americans live their lives. I admit that I'm also guilty of being a little out of step with some of my family members. But I can play a mean catch-up when I visit my red home state or when they visit me here in my blue colony of Washington, D.C. (Yes, we are still fighting for statehood and voting rights.) In this coming season, Democrats must resist going back to using terms like affirmative action, pro choice, union, and "the movement" to describe what we're for. These words are limited and often open to negative interpretation from the right. But once we agree on a shared vision to connect our progressive social values of faith, family, hard work, loyalty, opportunity, security, and prosperity for all, we will soar again. Democrats will build on the successes of this year. More grass-roots organizers were recruited and trained than ever before. Over $300 million was raised in one year—the most ever by the Democratic Party. We started this electoral season more unified and energized than ever before; we must continue to soar. When my grandma would often put us to sleep at night, she read from the Bible. Her favorite Scripture from the book of Galatians was, "[D]o not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Now more than ever, we must use our faith to fight on until victory is won. Continue to soar, and together we will take back our country. |
| Politics is the art of the possible, and electoral success will simply not be possible if something doesn't change.
While many of you probably agree in theory, I suspect many of you are also torn about courting the "faith voters." On the one hand, you know that Democrats must become more comfortable with religion in order to win. On the other hand, you're furious at the perceived bigotry and backwardness of religion in America. You resent accommodating religious voters who you see as clearly wrong (and perhaps backward and superstitious). In short, a lot of progressives simply don't like religion, and are downright hostile to Christianity because of the American religious right (I'm only talking about Christianity because it's the majority religion). Well, it's time to get over it. Consider this is a self-help post for those who are too hostile to Christianity to put their heart into adopting the new rhetoric of Values 2.0. The first step is to admit the problem. If you resent American Christians because of this election or any other reason, then say so. Let it out. Scream if you must. Scream about the Enlightenment, and superstition, and whatever else you want to scream about. If you think religion is stupid, then don't hide it. You can't use the rhetoric of values if you don't really believe in what you're saying. And that's my goal - to make even the most secular rationalists comfortable with the idea (and not just the rhetoric) of Values 2.0. Now, try to forget what you know and start from a blank slate. Approach it from a new perspective. And here's the perspective I want you see - Christianity can be appreciated by people who don't believe in the divinity of Christ, or that don't believe in God at all. First, approach it just as you would approach studying some religious practice in a foreign country or from a past era. It's strange that so many big-hearted progressives extend so much respect to the religions of foreign cultures, but fail to extend that same respect to the exurbs of Atlanta. Second, take a hour or two one night and go read the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). These four books are the foundation of all Christianity. Consider it an exercise in anthropology. I think many of you (especially those who don't know much about the religion) will find it a fascinating insight into the minds of the Red Americans that seem so foreign. It will help you understand them. And once you understand them, you can begin to have a dialogue with them, rather than a screaming match. I went back and read them this weekend for the first time in many years. I wanted to make sure that the Jesus I remembered from childhood was the opposite of the intolerance I'm seeing today. And he was - in spades. Again, for those of you actively hostile to American Christianity, don't read it as a religious text. Read as you would read the teachings of Plato or Emerson or Thoreau. One can be a complete atheist and still find wisdom in the words and stories. As for the miracles, treat them as parables or allegories, just as you would the Garden of Eden story (which is a beautiful work of literature and nothing more). The point of all this is for everyone to learn how strikingly different the themes of the Gospels are from Republican policies. You will be rather shocked. I mean, look at the following verses and ask yourself whether they're more likely to come from a big-hearted progressive or from Karl Rove: Matthew 3: Matthew 7: John 8: You get the point. Reading through the Gospels with an adult eye makes it clear just how humane and kind the actual teachings are. People like Falwell like to twist isolated verses, but ignore the overall themes, which come through again and again - love, tolerance, humility, forgiveness. These are not the values of Karl Rove, and we have to be conversant in the language to make that case. ..snip.. e trick is that we have to show that progressive policies are extremely consistent with the values that these people take so seriously. I'm not even talking about gay marriage - I'm talking about everything. I'm talking about the entire political platform. And to do that, progressives need to learn the language. These people must trust you before they'll listen to a word you say. And if you approach them with an intellectual empathy and respect for their beliefs, you can start persuading - even if you think God is a silly superstition. The most die-hard atheist would have an easier time persuading potential religious progressives by arguing within the framework rather than denouncing religion. And that would be easier if the atheist found some parts of the text that were actually inspiring. We live in a religious nation under majoritarian rule. You gotta learn to speak this language, or you're going to see a lot more rule by Rove the Pharisee. |
| What might the Democratic Party learn from this election? First, that a posture of meekness, resignation and accommodation leads to failure. At no time during the campaign did the Democratic candidate discuss in an honest way the single most important issue facing the country: how to disengage from the war in Iraq. Second, that money, while it can indeed make a major difference, is not the party's problem; the familiar excuse that Republicans raise more campaign funds was extinguished this year. Nor was the country at large indifferent to Bush's alliance with industrial plunderers and his shameful schemes to dismantle social, economic and environmental protections; almost half the electorate voted against these things.
It would be a mistake to adopt the television stereotype of red states and blue states. Many states of both colors were in fact almost evenly divided. The Democratic elite are out of touch, as Republicans claim. They have lost reliable connections to ordinary people, including some long loyal constituencies. John Kerry did not lose this election in the South (those defeats were fully expected). He lost it in leading industrial states that, given their economic condition, should have belonged to the Democrats. Kerry advocated establishment views, on trade and globalization, for instance, that distanced him from his natural constituency. He could not find the words and images to speak authentically about their lives. He did not offer plausible remedies to their pain. The Democratic Party is not the only vehicle for change. Historically, that party's finest moments have come when it was pushed into action from outside by popular movements, from the labor movement to the civil rights movement to the women's movement to the gay-rights movement. Such movements--independent of the Democratic Party but powerfully influencing it--must foster and increase their strength. The Nation will support these movements. We must all stand and fight. |
| eorge Bush is a self-proclaimed conservative. In this election, 84% of those people who identify as conservatives voted for George Bush, thereby endorsing his policies. I say, and my Catholic upbringing says, that your actions are your beliefs, and there is no difference between the two. Considering this, it is time to face some facts:
• Real conservatives value fiscal insolvency, including irresponsible tax cuts, corporate giveaways, massive spending increases, huge undisclosed pork-barrel spending projects hammered out during congressional conference, rather than actual budget legislation on the Congressional floor that is open to the public and recorded in the public record. You know that conservatives value these things, because these are the things the vast majority of self-proclaimed conservatives do.
• Real conservatives do not value your personal liberties. They like disenfranchising voters, challenging voters, and making it more difficult to vote. They like it when the government is in your bedroom. They want to be able to spy on your personal files. They do not respect your right to privacy. They like to tell you who you can and cannot love, and what you can and cannot do to your own body. You know these are conservative values, because conservatives regularly pass laws of this nature. • Real conservatives like to recklessly use the military They love war, and regularly resort to it as one of their first choices. They have no respect for the lives their policies destroy, as long as they have more bases overseas. They derive their values from violence, and detest peace. They will come up with any excuse possible, and cynically invent several more, to use force whenever possible, wherever possible. You know these are conservative values, because these are the actions conservatives take. Real conservatives are bloodthirsty, reckless with our tax money, and want to tell you how to live your life. They are intolerant, warmongering and irresponsible. You know these are real conservatives values, because you can find anyone's beliefs in what they do, not what they say. |
Matthew Yglesias (Proud Member of the Reality-Based Community):
| If the next four years really do have awful consequences, then the Republicans will almost certainly be booted from power. If they don't (no more terrorist attacks, no more wars, no dire economic distress) then the Democrats will have a problem, but it's the sort of problem I would welcome. The thing to worry about is that the Democrats will be presented with a situation where it's quite easy to get into office, but whose human consequences are horrifying. |
Lenny Bruce:
| Liberals can understand everything but the people who don't understand them. |
Kos:
| It wasn't the war or the economy that killed us. It was the notion of "values".
Massachusetts has the lowest divorce rate in the nation, yet Kerry was bad because he had "Massachusetts values" or other such nonesense. We need to retake the language. We need to reframe the notion of "value". That's why Obama's speech below is so brilliant. He speaks of God in a way that not just fails to offend this atheist, but inspires me. It's faith used for the purpose of living a good life, rather than faith wielded as a weapon against a whole class of people. The wedges: gays, abortion, and guns. Democrats have abandoned guns as an issue, and over the next three or four cycles it will prove an increasingly ineffective wedge. The NRA won. Good for them. That leaves the two "faith based" wedges -- gays and abortion. And with great skill, the Republicans have equated those two issues with the word "value". That's going to have to change. |
| There's just one little request I have. If it's not too much trouble, of course. Call me profoundly misguided if you want. Call me immoral if you must. But could you please stop calling me arrogant and elitist?
I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose abortion and where gay relationships have full civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values -- as deplorable as I'm sure they are -- don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same gender, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant? We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree? |
| Like many such movements, this long-running conservative revolt is rife with contradictions. It is an uprising of the common people whose long-term economic effect has been to shower riches upon the already wealthy and degrade the lives of the very people who are rising up. It is a reaction against mass culture that refuses to call into question the basic institutions of corporate America that make mass culture what it is. It is a revolution that plans to overthrow the aristocrats by cutting their taxes.
Still, the power of the conservative rebellion is undeniable. It presents a way of talking about life in which we are all victims of a haughty overclass - "liberals" - that makes our movies, publishes our newspapers, teaches our children, and hands down judgments from the bench. These liberals generally tell us how to go about our lives, without any consideration for our values or traditions. The culture wars, in other words, are a way of framing the ever-powerful subject of social class. They are a way for Republicans to speak on behalf of the forgotten man without causing any problems for their core big-business constituency. Against this militant, aggrieved, full-throated philosophy the Democrats chose to go with ... what? Their usual soft centrism, creating space for this constituency and that, taking care to antagonize no one, declining even to criticize the president, really, at their convention. And despite huge get-out-the-vote efforts and an enormous treasury, Democrats lost the battle of voter motivation before it started. ..snip.. Yet this would have been a perfect year to give the Republicans a Trumanesque spanking for the many corporate scandals that they have countenanced and, in some ways, enabled. Taking such a stand would also have provided Democrats with a way to address and maybe even defeat the angry populism that informs the "values" issues while simultaneously mobilizing their base. To short-circuit the Republican appeals to blue-collar constituents, Democrats must confront the cultural populism of the wedge issues with genuine economic populism. They must dust off their own majoritarian militancy instead of suppressing it; sharpen the distinctions between the parties instead of minimizing them; emphasize the contradictions of culture-war populism instead of ignoring them; and speak forthrightly about who gains and who loses from conservative economic policy. What is more likely, of course, is that Democratic officialdom will simply see this week's disaster as a reason to redouble their efforts to move to the right. They will give in on, say, Social Security privatization or income tax "reform" and will continue to dream their happy dreams about becoming the party of the enlightened corporate class. And they will be surprised all over again two or four years from now when the conservative populists of the Red America, poorer and angrier than ever, deal the "party of the people" yet another stunning blow. |
That enough for you???
I'll be back with my thoughts shortly...
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