I think a case could be made that ignorance played at least as big a role in the election's outcome as values. A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
Homercles has a counter-point: It's not that Kerry's message wasn't received, it's that it wasn't well-received. The red/blue disconnect:
In what should be a time for the Democratic PTBs to reflect on what they've done wrong, they've instead launched into the same knee-jerk, "people are too stupid to understand", tired-ass BS that they reach for whenever someone disagrees. It seems to be based on this dichotomy:
1) We failed to get the message out.
2) We succeeded to get the message out, but Americans are stupid.
The only way one can accept that this dichotomy is the only logical resultion to Election 2004 is if one accepts social, sexual, and cultural diversity as the only absolute right (which in itself, is quite a merry little paradox). The thing that troubles me about this fundamental postulate of modern radical thinking is that it automatically presupposes the superiority of its holders.
. . .
Our goals are the same; it is the means to those ends that cause so much consternation and disagreement. And if the Dem party ever decides that it finally wants to get serious about halting its own spiral into irrelevance, it needs to accept that a majority of Americans (maybe not an overwhelming one, but still a majority) do not agree with those means; further, it needs to recognize that continually calling the coveted constituency moronic does not make for new converts.
My belief: I think that we have a difficulty in defining terms that has led to a fundamental miscommunication. I've no time to go back and do the background research today on these issues, but from what I've gleaned from the blogs and MSM, there's a difference of opinion in what constitutes "clear evidence" that Hussein and Al Qaeda had ties, what exactly is a "weapon of mass destruction" and what the "world" supported or didn't support. These are very detailed subjects, on which reasoned minds can disagree. There is also disagreement between the two sides in whether to justify invasion we needed to show capability of obtaining WMDs, intent to obtain WMDs, actual physical possession of WMDs, etc.
One example: there is an excellent WIKIPEDEA article on the subject here, which states, in part:
"Former UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter stated that, as of 1998, 90–95% of Iraq's nuclear, biological, and chemical capabilities, and long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons, had been verified as destroyed. Technical 100% verification was not possible, claims Ritter, not because Iraq still had any hidden weapons, but because Iraq had preemptively destroyed some stockpiles and claimed they had never existed.
That year, Ritter sharply criticized the Clinton administration and the U.N. Security Council for not being vigorous enough about insisting that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction be destroyed. Ritter also accused U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan of assisting Iraqi efforts at impeding UNSCOM's work. 'Iraq is not disarming,' Ritter said on August 27, 1998, and in a second statement, 'Iraq retains the capability to launch a chemical strike.'"
So if two people, "red" and "blue" voters were reading the same quote, I believe the second paragraph would resonate more loudly with the "red" voter and the first with the "blue." Each would use the quote to support his or her position that the war was or was not justified. To call one educated and one ignorant is simply not helpful to an understanding of the nuances of the issue.
A side point: the issue is not whether, in hindsight, WMD's were found or not. The issue is whether we had sufficient information and authority pre-invasion to justify the Iraq war.
Probably the best online outreach I've seen is here, entitled "Open Letter to the Democratic Party. Got the link from Instapundit. It's too good to summarize, just go and read it. Scroll through the comments. There are some trying to pick the author apart and dismissing her views, but given the context and content of the letter, I think it would be an utter mistake for Dems to ignore this kind of outreach. There are only two ways to win the next election: 1) to mobilize the non-voters in unprecedented quantities, or 2) to persuade voters to your point of view. Who are you going to bank on? You can't count on non-voters to even show up for the dance.
More of what's NOT HELPFUL: a blatant attempt to distort and manipulate. Posted on the Daily Kos, and seen on both Instapundit and The Volokh Conspiracy, this quote by Associate Professor Tom Schaller at the University of Maryland:
"Marching order #1, therefore, is this: No matter whom you talk to outside our circles, begin to perpetuate the (false, exaggerated) notion that George Bush's victory was built not merely on values issues, but gay marriage specifically. If you feel a need to broaden it slightly, try depicting the GOP as a majority party synonymous with gay-haters, warmongers and country-clubbers. Because I, for one, am tired of hearing whiny complaints from conservatives that, not only do I not have values, but that I fail to properly respect the values of people who are all too happy to buy into, no less perpetuate, inaccurate caricatures of the 54+ million Americans who voted Tuesday for John Kerry."
Okay, half the issues that you see on "red" voter websites is that they were tired of the rabid rhetoric comparing the administration to the Nazi regime and all but accusing Bush of conducting secret satanic rituals involving the disembowling of Iraqi schoolchildren. Distortions and half-truths have become standard fare in election years, but to propogate them further is to widen the polarization of the country, not narrow it. Educated voters ignore the inflammatory rhetoric. Uneducated ones are probably checking themselves into rehab because their heads are still spinning from all the contradictory flame-throwing, and I doubt they'll be out in time for Election 2008. Can't we do this right? Really?
Finally, I can definitely vote for this quote I saw on The Volokh Conspiracy:"Quote of the Week," from the Mobile Register:
"Where are we going? And why am I in a handbasket?" -- From a Wednesday e-mail exchange of several Alabama Democratic Party activists.
A sense of humor is mandatory when following politics.
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