A closer look at America
What did the election really mean? Much confusion has arisen from an exit poll suggesting that a plurality of voters (22 percent) listed moral values as their primary concern and that Bush won this group by a whopping 80 percent. From this, the right argues that that there is a mandate to ban abortion and press a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The left conjures up a cartoon of the Bush majority as intolerant religious fanatics uninformed on the big issues and dedicated to political imperialism.
Both perceptions are built on sand. First, why rely on an exit poll that got the election wrong? Second, as Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center comments, moral values may have ranked ahead of job security only because it was such an ambiguous, appealing, catchall phrase. If healthcare, taxes, jobs, and the economy had been included in the economic category, it would have been the top concern of 33 percent. And if you combined terrorism and Iraq, as many voters did, that would have topped out at 34 percent. As the Economist points out, the 22 percent "moral" share was lower than in the elections of 2000 and 1996, when 35 percent and 40 percent, respectively, put moral and ethical issues first. (Remember, President Clinton was a factor here.) Nor were the highly religious a greater proportion of voters this year than they were four or eight years ago. The number of people totally opposed to all abortion remained at 16 percent, just as it did in 2000.
Elitist. All this is not to say that moral values are irrelevant today. Gay marriage excited concern beyond all previous norms, and there is no doubt about the level of repugnance some Americans feel for the trashier offerings of Hollywood, cable TV, popular music, and pornographic websites. Democrats subscribe to traditional values, of course, but to subscribe is different than to embrace. There is a sense that the Democrats are uneasy about setting any limits on such matters as abortion, marriage, and culture. Imagine if John Kerry had gone to San Francisco and told Mayor Gavin Newsom he had broken the law about gay marriage. Never happened. This is part of why many people feel the Democratic Party has largely become elitist, dominated by the sophisticated, liberal values of a progressive, highly educated class that condescends to the less educated and their traditional values.
Too much has been made of red states and blue states. What gave George W. Bush his victory was a shift in the entire country. The president did better among all religious voters, not just right-wing, evangelical Protestants but also Roman Catholics--especially Hispanic Catholics--and Jews. Bush improved his base in big cities, small cities, in virtually every geographic area of the country, and he did better in 15 of the 20 states that Al Gore won four years ago, even in New York and Massachusetts.
Moral values, then, shouldn't be equated with religiosity, geography, or stances on certain social issues. Rather, they seem to be connected by a powerful cultural unease that led 80 percent of voters who list moral values as their greatest concern to vote for Bush.
If there's one thing that helps connect all the dots, it's 9/11. Bush was unambiguous about the fact that we are in a war of good versus evil, just as he has framed some issues as choices between right and wrong. Only 8 percent of voters listed religious faith as the most important quality in a leader, but 34 percent said they wanted a strong leader who would take clear stands on the issues. Some 49 percent said they trusted only Bush to deal with terrorism--18 points more than voters who said they trusted Kerry on the issue. Women were key. Gore won the women's vote by 11 percent in 2000, Kerry by only 3 percent this year. Bush carried married women by 55 percent, up from 49 percent in 2000.
But while a conservative populism is in the ascendancy, its reach should not be overstated. With it, there is an underlying acceptance of many positions that liberals have long fought for. Today, we see increased tolerance on issues related to homosexuality, expressed in the growing acceptance of civil unions--something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. We see increased tolerance of interracial relations and a broad consensus against segregation, in contrast to American attitudes of 35 years ago. We also see wide acceptance of women's rights. Issues that Democrats disagree on, in other words, simply can't be dealt with by attacking the other side as religious cranks.
We do not have to look forward to a future in which America is permanently divided into red and blue states or racked by a culture war. At the same time, the Democrats will remain a party of opposition if they fail to understand that attitude counts at least as much as policy.
This story appears in the December 13, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.