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He is now dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley. Christopher Edley, welcome to NOW.

EDLEY: Thanks, David. Good to be here.

BRANCACCIO: So they asked folks walking out of the polls on Tuesday "What was the big issue for you?" And they said moral values. I mean, this seemed to trump for 22 percent of those polled things like terrorism, things like jobs. Moral values. What does that say to you?

EDLEY: This is a continuing problem for Democrats. And, frankly, since the Martin Luther King days in the '60s, there's been a secularization of the way in which liberals, progressives talk about our great issues.

And I think it's impoverished civic discourse in important ways. The reality is that most of the difficult policy questions that divide us are at root about values. And if our leaders don't engage the public on the plane of values, which frequently involves religion, if they don't engage the public on the plane of values, then you're gonna lose the argument.

BRANCACCIO: But the Republicans use this value stuff as almost a wedge issue. I mean, they use it for political advantage.

EDLEY: They do. And I have to say that there is a danger here. There's clearly a danger. If appealing to values and religion means an absolutism then the process of governing can really get bogged down, we'll be at loggerheads.

I actually think that that's one reason why Democrats are often reluctant to speak in those terms. If it's just about my ten-point plan versus your eight-point plan, maybe we can cut a deal at nine. But if it's about your deepest convictions versus my deepest convictions, then the possibilities for working something out and making the process effective are much diminished.

BRANCACCIO: And you must have noticed this. You talk to some Democrats and you say, "What about values?" And progressives will say of course they have values. They have values like equality. That everyone is entitled to a living wage. But that's not exactly, I think, what those voters polled coming out of the polling places were saying when they said moral values.

EDLEY: I think that's right. It's not quite the same thing. This is more than packaging. This is what you reach down inside and present to the people. What you present of yourself when you're trying to get a voter to trust you for the next four years. Look, I remember when I was working with President Clinton on race issues.

And I was with a group that met with him regularly over a period of time talking about affirmative action. We talked about everything. After one particular session in the Oval Office where we'd been arguing about some very tough issues, moral issues, legal issues, the whole deal. We were breaking up. And he said, "You know, this reminds me of something I was reading last night in my Bible."

BRANCACCIO: This was what the President said?

EDLEY: With the president. He walked around behind his desk in the Oval Office, opened a drawer, pulled out a Bible in microscopic print. Put on his reading glasses and then he read a passage from I think it was the Gospel Matthew. Saint Matthew. And was right on point. Made complete sense on the policy issues that we'd been talking about.

Seemed completely authentic, in the moment. And I thought that was pretty cool. But a little later I was thinking about it, replaying it. And it struck me that if 30 feet away in the Cabinet room I'd been arguing with the Attorney General about the budget for the Bureau of Prisons and somebody had cited scripture as a reason to cut or to enhance the budget, I think everybody in the room would have felt that that was somehow inappropriate, that a line had been crossed.

That it wasn't appropriate to appeal to scripture in order to make a budget decision, a major policy choice. And that kind of ambivalence between when is it appropriate, when is it not appropriate to appeal to values, to appeal to religion, is something that really has Democrats sort of stymied. When is it right? When is it wrong?

BRANCACCIO: Because in the America of 2004, it seems increasingly acceptable to perhaps bring in a values or faith discussion to the policy debate. That is what Republicans seem to be doing very effectively.

EDLEY: In a confused world, people are looking for a source of guidance. They're looking trying to figure out what the way forward is. And I'm just not gonna trust you with this laundry list, this eyes glazed over set of propositions about what you wanna do in this area or that area when, frankly, I don't trust politicians to actually deliver on what they say anyway.

So tell me who you are. Tell me what makes you tick. Help me connect with you. Part of it's likeability, certainly. But the other part of it is connecting with you because I get where you're coming from. I can identify with you.

BRANCACCIO: But are you worried that there are progressives watching this right now who are saying, "Okay, I get the takeaway point. We just need to find someone a little more like Clinton, a little more like President Carter who's more comfortable with his faith and can use this language.

EDLEY: Well, I think it's certainly part of being that. That a Jimmy Carter or a Bill Clinton certainly has a comfort level in discussing their religiosity, in discussing values. But it's got… it can't just be in the one person. It's really gotta pervade the party.

Look, I also remember going up to the Hill to lobby on welfare reform. And at the time, we were really talking about what I think of as policy plumbing and of the detailed technicalities of welfare reform legislation and what needed to happen. Conservatives, on the other hand, were talking about the work ethic. They were talking about out-of-wedlock births. They were talking about the deserving and the undeserving poor.

They were talking about values while we were doing the policy plumbing. And, of course, years go by, it turns out the public wasn't interested in plumbing. They were interested in the values. And we got a very conservative form of welfare reform enacted some years later. That is the mistake that we make. That in some respects I think Democrats and certainly progressives were so convinced of the rightness of our policy positions that I just wanna beat you over the head with it again and again without trying to understand what about your values that's making it difficult for you to see your way clear to follow me in the direction I'm suggesting.

BRANCACCIO: Where might progressives find a figure or an idea that jump starts this process to reevaluating the party's message? The movement's message to these moral issues or issues of faith?

EDLEY: Look, I think there are a number of Democrats who are certainly comfortable speaking in that direction. Actually, the nation got a chance to see one of them this summer at the convention: Barak Obama. One of the things that touches people about his rhetoric and that's been a hallmark of his success in Illinois is that the importance of the party categories seem to fade away.

And it's his personality, his character, his values that seem to be luminous and make people want to follow him because they can trust him. They can believe in him. Bill Clinton once said something interesting. He said that American voters would rather support somebody who's wrong but strong as compared with somebody who's right but weak.

Now there he wasn't so much talking about values as he was talking about character and leadership, et cetera. But I think the same holds true. If I get a basic sense that you've got values, they're somewhat like mine, I'm gonna follow you, and the policy particulars can just fade away. That's what I'm focused on is "who are you?"

BRANCACCIO: Now this moral issues question was not the only thing that led to this — what should we call it— grand slam by the Republican Party this week. A lot of issues. The Republicans made some inroads among, for instance, Latino voters. Republicans are speaking their tune somehow at some level.

EDLEY: Look, and that's a very dangerous trend for the Democrats. The estimates are that in 2000, Gore got about 67 percent of Latino votes. Kerry this time, 53 percent, 55 percent. If that pattern holds, we're talking New Deal style realignment in our political process.

Democrats have gotta get it together. Values is part of it. Look, another way of thinking about this is if you go back and look at the slave states, the segregation states, the 17 states that were the source of Jim Crow segregation, those states, plus the sort of Missouri Compromise states, those were over 2/3 of the electoral votes that President Bush won this time around.

That lock on now the South, the central states, this is old deep stuff that has echoed down literally through the centuries in the divisions within this country. The only way to bridge that, it seems to me, is for Democrats to have messages, to have, not just messages but positions that resonate with folks in terms of a vision for the country that isn't about the policy details, but is instead about the pole star that we believe we need to follow.

BRANCACCIO: 'Cause the thing is, Christopher, that the conservative movement has figured out a wonderful way to bridge this issue. Their message seems to resonate increasingly among people of modest means. And they've forged this amazing coalition between folks at the top of the income level and folks towards the bottom. And it's something that the Democrats, they need to start looking at.

EDLEY: But there's also a tactical issue here. There is an argument always about to what extent do we pay attention to our base of minority voters, of low income voters? Versus focusing on the swing voters. This is the perennial difficulty that the strategists have.

BRANCACCIO: Democratic Leadership Council, the centrists says go for the swing voters and don't even talk to, for instance, maybe African-Americans.

EDLEY: Now if you're not gonna talk to the African-Americans, if you're not gonna talk to Latinos. If you're not going to also talk to swing voters about why it should matter to them what's happening to the Democratic base, if you're not gonna talk in a way that tries to connect the values that we aspire to as Americans and have them make sense to Joe Six-Pack, then you've lost it completely.

So I think the prescriptions that say "run away from progressivism, run towards the center" are exactly wrong because that is inconsistent with the message that says "focus on the core values."

BRANCACCIO: But could you then tell me that by running to the left, that would also produce enough votes to win one of these things?

EDLEY: Look, what I'm saying is if the values are about opportunity and about community building and about connecting with people who are different from you, that you can't communicate that message, you can't project that value if you wanna leave Latinos, African-Americans, have-nots out of the equation, out of your communications strategy, out of your campaign strategy.

If you're ignoring the very communities who are, in essence, the center of your values message about compassion and opportunity, then you're not credible. You're not gonna be able to talk about it in a convincing way. So that is really our challenge. It used to drive me nuts when Ronald Reagan would give important speeches filled with anecdotes about real human beings.

Because, as a dyed-in-the-wool policy wonk, I wanted to hear the analysis. I wanted to hear the data. But the reality is that the American people wanna hear the stories because the stories are a vehicle for projecting values.

BRANCACCIO: I wanna move you on briefly now to something that's crucial. I mean, the earth shifted this week in America to the left, to the right, everybody agrees on this essential topic. For you, what is the most significant development this week that will perhaps shape America for the longest term?

EDLEY: Well, remember that this big shift in political terms amounts to a swing of 100,000 votes in Ohio. But it will have a meaningful impact, a very serious impact. First and foremost, it seems to me, in the judiciary. Because the greatest, the most important, the most lasting part of a president's legacy is often the judges that are appointed. So…

BRANCACCIO: The Supreme Court certainly.

EDLEY: Starting with the Supreme Court. But the lower courts as well. Now President Bush has been very effective, very focused on sending nominees for the lower courts who reflect a conservative ideology. And only a handful of them have been blocked by Congress out of hundreds.

He's had a much higher success rate in terms of confirmations than Bill Clinton did, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary that you hear from many Republicans. Going forward, the opportunity to remake the Supreme Court could have a major impact on American society for a generation.

BRANCACCIO: And when you say conservative ideology, when it comes to judges, what are you talking about? 'Cause one way to look at it as a conservative legal approach is a cautious one, one that looks carefully at case law over the years. But you're talking about something else.

EDLEY: No, I'm talking about ideological conservatism that over and over again we've seen over the last 20 years, puts aside principles of precedent that have guided judicial decision making. And attempts to remake legal doctrine.

The question is which points of view are gonna control it?

When judges come before the Senate, there's an added issue. And that is what Constitutionally is the advice and consent role of the Senate when the president sends forward a nominee who seems to be or is arguably outside the mainstream? To what extent must senators simply defer to the president's preferences for who should be a judge?

And I and many others have argued that the Senate does have a role in trying to make sure that the extremes, be it left or right, the extremes are ruled out when we're making what are, after all, lifetime appointments-- to incredibly powerful unelected offices. We live with these choices for generations. And-- someone with a mandate of 100,000 voters in Ohio should not be able to remake the Constitution.

BRANCACCIO: But someone who has 55 Republican senators when the magic number is 60, that's getting close to the 60 needed by the Republicans to just fly these nominees through.

EDLEY: Not fly. But be prepared to struggle. And I hope there will be a struggle because there's so much at stake. If you talk about a woman's right to choose, or you talk about the future of affirmative action, or you talk about the president's war powers. These kinds of issues that Americans do, in fact, care about… are importantly shaped by the ideology, if you will, sad to say. The ideology of the folks who wear the black robes. But it's not a slam dunk for Bush going forward. He's gonna have to be prepared to defend many of his judicial choices. And we'll see whether or not Democrats in the Senate, moderate Republicans in the Senate, the few that remain, will exercise their Constitutional responsibility to put the president to a tough test.

BRANCACCIO: You know, Grover Norquist says that Democrats should now be prepared to be a permanent minority. Are Democrats ready for that?

EDLEY: Well, I think that's what Newt Gingrich said in 1994. But the Gingrich revolution didn't last very long. Let me put it this way, the Republicans have created the very real possibility of a lasting political realignment. The question is whether or not Democrats recognizing demography and recognizing the importance of this values discourse will be smart enough, will be smart enough to adopt a strategy that speaks more effectively to the broader group of Americans who don't care about the policy plumbing. But they do care about the pole star that our leaders are following.

BRANCACCIO: Well, Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley's law school, thank you very, very much.

EDLEY: My pleasure.