From Richard Reeves' column in
New York Magazine last week, also available in-full
online
"This campaign, I would argue, is one of the last convulsions of angry, real American men, fighting desperately (and well) to hold back the time and tide of the new--the un-white and un-Christian, and girlie-men, too, who sooner or later will be America. Bush has the Father Knows Best vote, from men who have lost their personal power and hate what is happening all around them.
"As a group, their power probably peaked in 1996, when the Christian Coalition distributed 40 million election guides after Bill Clinton's veto of the partial-birth-abortion ban. Since then, though, the coalition and other reactionary groups have lost power, besieged by infighting and lawsuits and defections of leaders who have muted their anger to go mainstream.
"Now the angry men left behind see George Bush as their last champion--whether he really is or not is a different question--as the man who can hold the line against these aliens and all these alien ideas. This is why Kerry's words 'global test' have become a mantra chanted by Bush and his surrogates. Whatever the senator's words actually meant, a lot of good old-fashioned American men had their own idea: Kerry was going to give away God-given American superpower and greatness to the aliens."