The statistic is now well known: of voters on November 2, 2004, 33% identified themselves as conservatives; only 21% as liberals.
Liberals have as much work to do, if they are going to have any long-term political success and influence, as the Religious Right (and conservatives in general) had 10 to 20+ years ago, when the Religious Right set goals such as "taking back" America by doing things like getting an evangelical elected President and overturning Roe v. Wade, and when intellectual conservatives set goals such as destroying Social Security and, to put it simplistically, avenging Goldwater and Nixon.
In the period 15, 20 and even 30+ years ago, the Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority were founded (1973 and 1979), televangelist Pat Robertson created the Christian Coalition (1989), Rush Limbaugh began his syndicated political radio show (1988), and conservative evangelical Christians accelerated greatly their political involvement, in part inspired by Pat Robertson's run for President (1988).
Conservative evangelical Christians began
>learning the political process,
>running for local offices,
>teambuilding,
>constructing communication operations,
>founding think tanks and publications,
>propping up or taking over those secular but conservative think tanks already in existence, like the American Enterprise Institute (1943),
setting short-, intermediate, and long-term goals, and
>doing the necessary grunt work--leafleting, attending local governmental meetings (school boards, boards of county supervisors, etc.), stuffing and licking envelopes, and--perhaps most importantly--being daily evangelists no longer just for Christ, but for what they since the late 1960's had increasingly had been told from the pulpit was the Christian political worldview for America.
And they vowed to represent that worldview in workplace conversations, at the dinner table, on the athletic field, in schools as students and teachers, everywhere, at any time, to anyone.
It should also be noted that they were willing to suffer candidates who were from the perspective of the Religious Right less than ideally conservative on social issues--like George H. W. Bush and Bob Dole--when they felt that doing so was a critical tactical necessity...but they never took their eyes of the prize, the strategic goals.
It should also be noted that they used the tools, styles, nomenclature of popular culture whenever and whenever they effectively could. This was a way of reaching out to the next generation of voters. (Part of a liberal strategy must be adopting the tools, styles, nomenclature of evangelical culture whenever and whenever possible. Here's one attempt at speaking to Christians in their own language in order to make an essentially partisan argument.)
That was 10, 15, and 20+ years ago.... But look at the fruits it has born:
>the 1996 "Republican Revolution" that seized Congress;
>the 2000 influence sufficient to force the GOP to pass on a relative moderate, John McCain;
>the 2002 congressional victories of numerous evangelical candidates, and
>the 2004 re-election of George W. Bush.
And it has born one of the greatest fruits among the harvest conservative Christians hoped for: an increase the percentage of Americans identifying with the evangelical Christian political agenda whether or not they are themselves evangelical Christians.
Liberals have a lot of work to do. And educating the next generation of voters and political leaders is paramount. Just because America is becoming more urbanized, just because young voters went for Kerry in big numbers, just because the nation is becoming "less white," is no guarantee of long-term victory. If liberals do not vigorously articulate a clear progressive message, using when helpful even the inherently irrational language of religion--towards which they have been arrogantly dismissive--minds will turn away from the light of liberty, hypnotized instead by the fires of fear, militarism, intolerance, and provincialism.
The defeat of John Kerry is clearly helping the Left wake up up to the reality that liberals are dangerously close to losing American hearts and minds for a long time. Liberals in America need 5, 10 & 20+ year plans if those proportions of conservatives and liberals in the electorate are going to change to favor the liberals.
