Culture wars conservatives and assholes like Karl Rove elected a village idiot for a second time in a row using billionaires' money. This much we know, but the post-election autopsy has not been conclusive.
The initial culprit for our demise was supposedly moral values. More abstractions soon followed, with a dreary barrage of words like leadership and security, as if these words explain why we lost, or reveal anything like the big picture.
As repulsive as it sounds, the only way to get the big picture is to turn off the televion and leave the security of our liberal echo chambers to listen to the people that didn't vote for the Democratic Party this year. But the word "listen" is of course ambiguous. So the real question is how do we listen to conservative voters? .
The short answer is we stick to our core values, while rejecting a neo-imperialist political style at home and abroad. The longer answer is the following:
First, please don't assume I'm one of those "hit me again Karl" Democrats. I'm not suggesting we should pay any attention to Rush Limbaugh or the freaky bloggers on the right or the Republicans in Congress. They can all go to hell. Listening doesn't mean we give up our core values or standards, or start calling ourselves compassionate conservatives, or turn into homophobic, race-baiting assholes.
But we do need to listen carefully to the over 50 percent of conservative voters that picked Bush over Kerry, without lampooning them. What are they really saying about their lives? What are they really saying about us? Assuming at least some of them got the basic differences between the candidates (I know this is a big if), then why then did they make such a huge mistake and pick W?
Note that those refusing to ask this question honestly on our side sound strikingly familiar: "Why do they hate us? They hate us because we're free." Now where have I head that before....? As liberals, we should recognize that in the long run it's wrong to take a neo-imperialist approach to politics abroad.
But the fact is, it's wrong to take this approach at home too. And it's not pragmatic. If we want to take on the Christian right, for instance, we need to try to understand what they're doing, and why they're making headway.
And to listen well, we need to get past some of our own prejudices and stereotypes. You don't listen carefully to people from a region you think is populated with a bunch of bigoted hicks from the cast of Deliverance. You can't listen to religious voters if you assume their main objective it to force kids to take communion and take away their school lunches. (Though certainly for many on the religious right this is about right).
On the other hand, listening doesn't mean pulling any punches. Barbara Ehrenreich offers the best analysis of their success I've heard in her recent article (which has been diaried on this site).
Here's she compares the Christian rights' methods to Hammas, and to earlier American Christians:
Where secular-type liberals and centrists go wrong is in categorizing religion as a form of "irrationality," akin to spirituality, sports mania and emotion generally. They fail to see that the current "Christianization" of red-state America bears no resemblance to the Great Revival of the early nineteenth century, an ecstatic movement that filled the fields of Virginia with the rolling, shrieking and jerking bodies of the revived. In contrast, today's right-leaning Christian churches represent a coldly Calvinist tradition in which even speaking in tongues, if it occurs at all, has been increasingly routinized and restricted to the pastor. What these churches have to offer, in addition to intangibles like eternal salvation, is concrete, material assistance. They have become an alternative welfare state, whose support rests not only on "faith" but also on the loyalty of the grateful recipients.
Barbara Ehrenreich on Evangelicals
I think this paragraph is a hugely important place to start. She might not get it entirely right. In particular the question of whether people have spiritual needs that the culture of MTV doesn't meet, is left unanswered. But when it comes to dissecting the Christian Right 's coldly rational ground game, I've not read anything better.
But whether you agree with her or not, the point I'm making here is really a lot more simple: Ehrenreich is a model for all of us because she listens extremely well. She does not lampoon the Christian right, she analyzes what she sees as its techniques. And more importantly she genuinely sympathizes with the working poor who have become its supporters.
This is the model of listening we need to follow over the next decades if we really want to beat them politically.
NOTE: this is an updated version of an earlier diary I wrote on a similar topic just after the election.