Heartland Values
In the grand tradition of knee jerk analysis, I am hearing all over the television and the blogosphere that we need to reach out to the religious people who voted for George W. Bush in order to win in the future. We must reject our "Hollywood values" and learn to embrace the real, American heartland values that George W. Bush personifies and which won him the election. One Democrat named Dave Strother just said that the Democrats have to purge themselves of the coasts or risk oblivion.
I wish that just once we would recognise when we are being played. The reason Bush won is because he eked out a victory in Ohio, period. That is the only number that matters in this presidential election and it doesn't represent a gigantic sea change in America. Bush won that small victory in Ohio because an unprecedented number of conservative evangelicals came out to vote. And, the "American Heartland value" that energized them was an amendment to the state constitution that not only defined marriage as between a man and a woman but also barred public institutions, such as universities, from providing health insurance and other benefits to domestic partners.
"This was the issue that delivered Ohio for President Bush,'' said Phil Burress, who spearheaded the Issue 1 campaign. ``We mailed out 2.5 million bulletins to 17,000 churches. We called 2.9 million homes and identified 850,000 supporters. We called every one of those supporters on Monday and urged them to vote Yes on 1."
(I guess we now know why they panicked about Mary Cheney, don't we? )
My question is this. Is there any combination of issues upon which we Democrats could accomodate these people that doesn't include backing anti-gay measures like that? In other words, as long as the Democratic party believes in equal rights for gay people is there a snowball's chance in hell that we will be able to tear the religious vote away from the party that doesn't with outreach to "heartland values?"
I doubt it. In fact, I think that we are talking about a wedge issue that is insurmountable. Civil rights are a fundamental matter of principle, not a position on specific programs or tax cut legislation. And I don't see any possibility that we will be able to make inroads with people who believe that homosexuality is a sin as a matter of bedrock religious belief. We can field a candidate who runs a campaign like a tent revival, but this is one of those issues that can't be finessed. As long as we believe in the separation of church and state and back civil rights for gays we are not going to get the conservative Christian vote. We just aren't.
If gay rights is the deciding factor for the forseeable future, then I think we may lose for a while. But, it won't be. It's really not a matter of law as much a matter of society getting used to the idea and it is happening very quickly. Gay marriage wasn't even on the radar screen ten years ago --- until the last couple of years, everybody had been growing used to the idea of civil unions, which even Junior has endorsed. My guess is that they won't be able to find an anti-gay measure to put on the ballot every election and as a result they won't be able to repeat this turn-out in the crucial states where they need it. This was a unique combination of Junior's phony born again image and the gay rights issue converging.
Pinning this election defeat on an alleged lack of "moral values" is short sighted and it plays right into Republican hands. The Republicans consistently use that club to beat us over the head again and again while they fervently watch the Falafel Factor and listen to Rush as he pops little blue babies between attacks on the Democratic party's hedonism. They only believe in strict moral values when it's somebody they don't like. This is political posturing and we are fools to let them use it to marginalize our 50% of the population.
There are competing values in this world and you can't be all things to all people. The election was won with 130,000 or so conservative evangelical votes in one state. That is decisive enough to declare victory in the election, but it is far too slim a margin to make the sweeping decision that the Democratic party needs to shelve its values of tolerance and civil rights to accomodate certain religious beliefs that are incompatible with them. The religious people are welcome to their beliefs, of course, but it's something on which we cannot compromise and have any of our own values left. (Oddly, I think that the truly religious people, as opposed to the poseur majority of republicans, might just understand that.)
I maintain that many people simply want a president whose image fits the role of president. Most of them vote on the basis of how the person makes them feel. They may like a little religion talk because it's code for a certain cultural ID and leadership archetype they feel comfortable with. And they want some personality in their leader, professionally presented as if it's authentic. Many of them are religious, (and they may have voted to ban gay marriage) but they are not driven to the polls on the conservative values agenda. Their motivation is not issues, although they tend to assign their preferred issues and solutions to their preferred candidate regardless of the reality. What they care about is style. Some of these people voted happily for Reagan, Clinton, Perot and Junior and see nothing remotely inconsistent in that. Those people we can reach with message, presentation and the right candidate.
The truly committed religious right,however, said to be 22 percent of this last electorate, is simply not obtainable. To even contemplate jettisoning our deeply held values to pander to them is useless and immoral.
But, get ready. The media are lazy and love the storyline of the wicked, hedonistic liberals being ignominiously defeated by the righteous salt of the earth Republicans. They are going to flog this until we are all convinced that the entire country is made up of conservative Christian Republicans and the rest of us are a bunch of freaks --- even the moderate and liberal Christians. Everyone will agree that the hope of the party is to abandon the coasts (with all their electoral votes, presumably.) But, just because they like a narrative it doesn't make it true. If we have learned anything over the years I would hope that at least we have learned that.