How are we doing today? Let's see... Yep, still disappointed, shocked and angry. But beginning to strategize, which is a sign of life.

Part of the sluggishness with which I posted yesterday was due to the length of time it took me to "think" in sentences - instead of expletives and groans. And part was because Blogger was abominably slow yesterday (and is again today), crashing several times just as I tried to log on. It was not a good day for that kind of thing, and just caused me to think more expletives (working in a 6X6 cubicle, one can't really think out loud).

Finally I got the entry up, bypassing my usual midwestern protestant cognitive filters. They're a little more engaged today, but not by much.

I continue to grieve the bizarre priorities of the triumphant half of the electorate, but I think today my biggest source of irritation (besides the ever-and-increasingly [if that is possible] arrogant Bush, himself) is how quickly the press and the pundits are adopting the "Conservative Christian versus Secular Liberals" storyline. Guess what! A whole bunch of liberal Christians voted yesterday! But we don't show up in any snappy demographic. That has got to change.

At the same time, I am SO SICK of the David Brooks' Gravy Train of a "Red State Blue State" schema, which seems to have infested every brain in media and which lends itself so very neatly to misleading graphics (that get a little less misleading when analyzed by county, but which still send shivers down the spines of "blue" voters and cause fist-pumps among "red" voters). Recall that a "red state" goes red when a Republican wins just over 50% of the vote! So those red states are often populated by 51% Republican and 49% Democrats -- a margin not unlike that "broad, national victory" Bush claims. If you take that into consideration, and create a graphic to represent the proportion of reds and blues, it looks like this. OK? Yes, unfortunately, 51% is "enough," but it's not the absolute domination that red/blue maps make it appear to be.

Nonetheless, you may want to pack your bags: "I earned capital in the campaign -- political capital -- and now I intend to spend it" --- George W. Bush gives us all the warning we need. There's some really stupid glossing-over in that story, by Jennifer Loven (AP), who tells us "For the second straight day, he pledged to reach out to those who opposed his re-election" and then quotes Bush saying "The campaign is over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan effort and results. I will reach out to every one who shares our goals." Repeat: "Every one who shares our goals." Where do you see "reaching out" in that?

But I want to get back to this "value voter" meme, to make sure I have it right: A "value voter" is one who opposes abortion and gay people, but does not oppose slaughtering innocent civilians in an unprovoked war, does not oppose corrupt and oppressive corporate governance or military contract profiteering, and does not oppose the exploitation of the most vulnerable people in society? Further, a "value voter" believes it's OK to lie - whether to take a nation to war or to win a local election - as long as a conservative Christian does it. Right? They just didn't teach us this stuff in catechism, so I feel like I'm behind the curve.

I see that Maureen Dowd is wrestling with this concept, also:

Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."

(Read the whole column; she's having an "on again" day.)

And Amy Sullivan is on the same demographic tear I am, but she's been doing it longer and better:

SLOW DOWN THERE....This, with apologies to Andrew, is hooey. "What we're seeing," writes Andrew Sullivan, "is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well."

Hate to point this out (no, actually, I don't--I've been saying this for a while now), but the "huge fundamentalist Christian revival" took place about thirty years ago, not last month, and it has always been explictly political. If I may condense a few decades of history into one sentence, the perfect storm that led to what we now call the Christian Right was this combination:

Angry reaction by conservative evangelicals to court rulings on school prayer, Bible-reading in public schools, and abortion motivating them to enter the political realm for the first time
plus
Outrage among Catholics, who had previously kept kind of quiet while focusing on assimilating amid anti-Catholicism, after Roe v. Wade, mobilizing them into a politically active force
plus
The realization by Republican strategists that they need to form a cohesive electoral block and that their best bet for winning the South was partnering with white church leaders, since those institutions were the last acceptable bastion of racism
equals
Rock-solid coalition of Christian Right and Republican Party.

And as a result, for a good twenty years now, people have assumed that if you're religious, you're a Republican and that if you're a Democrat, you can't possibly be religious. We know that isn't true. What's more, John Kerry's campaign (particularly in the last stretch of October) made great strides toward knocking down that mistaken belief. But unfortunately, it's going to take more time until perceptions match reality.

I gotta say, it doesn't help much when exit polls and sloppy reporting use terms like "moral values" and "moral issues" as shorthand for very narrow, divisive issues like abortion and gay marriage, feeding into twenty years of Republican rhetoric. Opposition to the war in Iraq is a moral issue. The alleviation of poverty is a moral issue. Concern about abortion is a moral value, yes, but you can stay at the level of empty rhetoric about a "culture of life" or you can talk about how to actually reduce abortion rates, which is what most people care about more. (Did you hear once during this election season that abortion rates have risen under W. after they fell dramatically during Clinton's eight years in office?)

"Religious" does not mean Republican. And "moral" does not mean conservative. There's going to be a lot of discussion about all of this over the coming weeks and months, and it's incredibly important to make sure we're neither sloppy about our terms nor overly broad in how we characterize "the faithful."

To help the press and the secular electorate begin to recognize distinctions among Christians (wouldn't it be nice if we had distinctive markings - like wing bars or brightly colored tail-feathers or cheek patches or something? clearly they need "visuals"), Allen of The Village Gate has prepared a detailed, yet concise field guide to Christianity that I think is really quite good.

Prayers for Elizabeth Edwards, who learned she has breast cancer, on the same day that her husband and his running mate conceded the election.