Astonishingly Early Post
Yes, but I wanted my oatmeal and coffee, so sleep was the less appealing alternative.

Have been trying to catch up with everything, including the stack of New Yorkers and Art magazines I'd neglected since October.

The one article in this week's New Yorker (December 6) not online is one we Democrats should read and take to heart, and stop all the freaking flagellation about "moral values." It's called "Permanent Fatal Errors," by Louis Menand, and completely explodes the myth of the moral voter. They are if anything less moral (or at least less churchy) than in previous years:

According to a report on Beliefnet, a religious Web site... forty-three per cent of Ohio voters in 2000 attended church once a week or more often. In 2004, the figure was forty per cent. In Florida in 2000, forty-one percent of voters were regular churchgoers, but only thirty-five per cent were this year.

Heathens! Godless voters, give us back your pagan votes! Bush doesn't want such filth in his administration!

The article also points out the bias toward anal sex and baby murdering inherent in the interpretation of the exit polls, where "moral values" was not interpreted as a concern for having a president that doesn't lie all the time or spend the day slaughtering and torturing people in Iraq and elsewhere, or try to exclude same-sex partners from visiting their dear ones who are dying in the hospital.

No, it really was 9/11 and security moms (though only by about 2 percent) and stupid white men in general, like we thought all along.

The article concludes

If Democrats believe that the lesson of the election is that the party needs to move to the right, then, if it moves, that will be the lesson. It might be wiser for the Democrats to chalk Bush's reelection up to 9/11 and stick to their positions.

Are you listening, DNC? I hope to god you are.

Back later with more good stuff.

- posted by Cynthia @ 6:58 AM | | | Link |