John Kerry was not defeated by the religious right. He was beaten by moderates who went — reluctantly in many cases — for President Bush. This will be hard for many Democrats to take. It’s easier to salve those wounds by demonizing religious conservatives. But in the 2004 election, Democrats left votes on the table that could have created a Kerry majority.
Consider these findings from the network exit polls: About 38 percent of those who thought abortion should be legal in most cases went to Bush. Bush got 22 percent from voters who favored gay marriage and 52 percent among those who favor civil unions. Bush even managed 16 percent among voters who thought the president paid more attention to the interests of large corporations than to those of “ordinary Americans.” A third of the voters who favored a government more active in solving problems went to Bush.
True, 22 percent of the voters said that “moral values” were decisive in their choices. But 71 percent picked some other issue. All this means that Bush won not because there is a right-wing majority in the United States but because the president persuaded just enough of the nonconservative majority to go his way. Even with their increased numbers, conservatives still constitute only 34 percent of the electorate. The largest share of the American electorate (45 percent) calls itself moderate. The moderates went 54 to 45 percent for Kerry, good but not enough. And 21 percent of this year’s voters — bless them — called themselves liberal.
These numbers do not lend themselves to a facile ideological analysis of what happened. The populist left can fairly ask why so many pro-government, anti-corporate voters backed Bush. The social liberals can ask why so many socially moderate and progressive voters stuck with the president. The centrist crowd can muse over the power of the terrorism issue. The exit polls found that perhaps 10 percent of Al Gore’s 2000 voters switched to Bush. Of these, more than eight in 10 thought the war in Iraq was part of the war on terrorism.
I gather by the way he phrased that last sentence that he doesn’t think it is. I do. Not in the sense that Iraq was backing 911, but in the same sense that Tunisia was a part of WWII. Iraq is a strategic base, with people who, short of Iran, probably have the best chance in the area of becoming a secular and free state. Kerry’s past stances on war (voting against the 1991 Gulf war, his anti-war activism during Vietnam, his votes to downsize military and intelligence) convinced me that he would be a disaster as a war President.
It’s not that I think this whole war should be fought with the military only, by any means. But I could not live with a President who doesn’t even believe we are at war.
