Democrats need to change tune

Will Democrats get it? Will they come to under-stand their national collapse in the last election.

We think the party's future depends on a realistic recognition of what happened Nov. 2. But after two weeks of post-election analysis, that doesn't seem to be happening.

It was indeed a collapse. The red states got redder, and even blue states got redder. A county-by-county view of the electoral map shows that Democratic candidate John Kerry managed to be competitive mostly in metropolitan areas across the country.

So it's remarkable how many lamenting liberals have attributed President Bush's re-election to a surge in the "evangelical Christian" vote driven by morality issues such as same-sex marriage or partial-birth abortion.

We think that is far off the mark. While George Bush certainly did get the evangelical vote, his support from that voter bloc grew only slightly from the 2000 election.

More significant in 2004 was Al Gore voters bleeding to the Bush column and the no-show "youth vote," which was wrongly presumed to be all in favor of Kerry. The loss of Gore voters was obvious in states such as Florida, which Bush won handily compared to the 2000 election, along with states where Kerry got far less support than Gore did, such as New Jersey, Minnesota or Michigan. Bush supporters such as Ed Koch, the former Democratic mayor of New York, Sen. Zell Miller, a lifelong Democrat, and actor Ron Silver, a seasoned liberal activist, were not alone in defecting from Kerry.

Yet there seems to be little recognition among Democrats that Bush was showered with support from voters who were not driven by religion or values issues. Instead, we get lots of talk about a huge swath of country going redneck. Or even worse, the red states are satirically labeled "Jesusland" by provocateurs such as "Fahrenheit 911" director Michael Moore.

It's a convenient but badly distorted view to think of Bush supporters as moronic, bigoted Bible thumpers. Feeding that delusion will only expedite shrinking national influence for the Democratic Party.

Democrats would benefit to consider what really happened.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Haliburton and other "big corporations" are not the enemy. Islamist extremists are the enemy. Most Americans understood this on election day.

Abu Ghraib was a scandal, but it was hardly an indictment of the entire U.S. military, let alone the Bush administration. And it paled in comparison to beheadings and roadside bombings in Iraq. Most Americans understood this on election day.

The Taliban have been banished, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida are on the run, Libya has surrendered its nuclear program, Saddam Hussein is in prison and his thuggish sons are dead. All in four years. Most voters knew this on election day.

The U.S. economy is not in the worst condition "since the Depression," as claimed by Sen. Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards. It has been relatively strong, by most indicators, pulling out of a recession and the economic aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most voters knew that on election day.

Regarding the country's morality play, most Americans do not reject same-sex marriage out of bigotry, but rather out of resistance to judges and mayors taking it upon themselves to define the 5,000-year-old institution of marriage.

Rather than looking at red states with bewildered disdain, Democrats should consider shortcomings of the Kerry campaign.

This country has long benefited from a competitive two-party political system. It would be a shame if Democrats slipped into long-term irrelevance by failing to understand voters outside urban areas.