More Important Than Bush's win...

Kerry will concede. Fine. I was never that excited about a Kerry presidency anyway. More important than the election's result is the schism in American society that its brought to light. Bush voters have supported:

1) An Imperial foreign policy.

2) The erosion of social safety nets. Social security is heading towards privatization, Bush's healthcare plan is that you should save more money for healthcare and pay for it yourself.

3) Oppression of lifestyle minorities. 11 states voted to ban gay marriage yesterday.

These three points comprise a vision that a popular majority of the American public believes in. It is the vision of the frontier. It is expansionist in terms of US power abroad. It believes that society owes an individual nothing in terms of providing health and comfort. It believes that the market of money takes primacy over the market of ideas and it believes in "traditional" lifestyles, defined not only biblically, but by centuries of western European tradition.

Republicans used the gay marriage issue to motivate its religious base. It worked. That's why high turnout worked in their favor. What will the Democrats do, going forward? Will they abandon their minority constituency in order to make a grab for the great, rightward-leaning middle? Will they, basically, give up the argument? The Democrats had, sadly, moved to the right over the years. Much as I liked Clinton, his policies were a continuation of Reagan's, just with their own twist. The convergence between Democrats and Republicans created the space for Nader's candidacy in 2000 which resulted in Bush's first victory and, indirectly, his second.

They learned nothing. During the primaries, we were told to compromise on the moderate John Kerry because if his "electability." Thanks for the advice.

We can no longer afford to comrpomise. We're in a battle of ideas now. Every inch we give hands a major victory to what has become, over the course of 20 years, a majority in American culture who want to bring us back to the old, frontier morality where they can enforce normalcy under the guise of decency and erode our social obligations and comforts in the name of liberty.