Now that we’ve had conservatives dismissing exit polling because it inaccurately portrayed the final results and claiming no credible evidence has emerged that computer problems may have impacted the presidential election, we have evidence to the contrary. OK, not exactly impacting the presidential election, but an optical scanning voting devise, not unlike those used in Florida that gave birth to some conspiracy theories, made a colossal mistake.

A hand recount declared a new winner.The erroneous tally was caused when the Fidlar Election Co. scanning system recorded straight-Democratic Party votes as votes for Libertarians in southeastern Indiana’s Franklin County.

The recount Thursday pushed Democrat Carroll Lanning from fifth to third in the three-seat commissioners race, while Republican Roy Hall fell to fifth.

Democrats had suspected a glitch after preliminary election results included a Libertarian congressional candidate winning 7.7 percent of the vote in Franklin County, more than four times better than he did across the entire district.

Fidlar workers said no programming problems were found in the Accuvote 2000 ES system, but said the Rock Island, Ill.-based company is going over its programming elsewhere in the state and in Wisconsin and Michigan, which, like Indiana, have straight-party voting.

And Kevin Drum has a post outlining the concern among some that the exit polls and the final tallies couldn’t have been that far apart.

Questions, questions.

“Much too much has been made of the moral values answer.”
–Cliff Zukin, a veteran pollster and professor of public policy at Rutgers University

The Pew Research Center conducted a poll asking voters what the most important issues were in the election. What they found not only brings into question whether “moral values,” defined by the right as code words for abortion and gay marriage, were the defining issues, but offers some guidance for progressives who might want to frame their issue with a moral halo.

The Pew Research Center polled 1,209 voters who said they cast ballots in the 2004 presidential election. When those voters were given a list, “moral values” was the most popular choice at 27 percent, followed by Iraq at 22 percent and the economy at 21 percent.

But when they were asked an open-ended question about the top issue, Iraq and the economy moved past moral values. Iraq was picked by 27 percent, the economy by 14 percent and moral values tied with terrorism at 9 percent.

“Moral values was an element in the Bush formula, but probably not the driving one,” said Lee Miringoff, president of the National Council of Public Polls.

The Pew poll found that voters’ reasons for picking “moral values” varies. Just over four in 10 of those who picked “moral values” from the list mentioned social issues like gay marriage and abortion, but others talked about qualities like religion, helping the poor, and candidates’ honesty and strength of leadership.

“Helping the poor and candidates’ honesty and strength of leadership.” Bush doesn’t do number 1, clearly has trouble with telling the truth and defines strength of leadership as stubbornness and rigidity. Just maybe six in 10 of the “moral values” voter pulled the lever for Kerry.

With all the trumpeting of red values after the election, I think Frank Rich’s upcoming column in the New York Times provides a prospective that Democrats need to keep in mind. The GOP may scream about “moral values” as the religious right interprets them to mean anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-pornography, but in reality, it is the general cultural coarseness, most often on display on your TV set, that has people upset. Yet, some of the worse purveyors of such coarseness are the big-time Red backers.

Those whose “moral values” are invested in cultural heroes like the accused loofah fetishist Bill O’Reilly and the self-gratifying drug consumer Rush Limbaugh are surely joking when they turn apoplectic over MTV. William Bennett’s name is now as synonymous with Las Vegas as silicone. The Democrats’ Ashton Kutcher is trumped by the Republicans’ Britney Spears. Excess and vulgarity, as always, enjoy a vast, bipartisan constituency, and in a democracy no political party will ever stamp them out.

If anyone is laughing all the way to the bank this election year, it must be the undisputed king of the red cultural elite, Rupert Murdoch. Fox News is a rising profit center within his News Corporation, and each red-state dollar that it makes can be plowed back into the rest of Fox’s very blue entertainment portfolio. The Murdoch cultural stable includes recent books like Jenna Jameson’s “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star” and the Vivid Girls’ “How to Have a XXX Sex Life,” which have both been synergistically, even joyously, promoted on Fox News by willing hosts like Rita Cosby and, needless to say, Mr. O’Reilly. There are “real fun parts and exciting parts,” said Ms. Cosby to Ms. Jameson on Fox News’s “Big Story Weekend,” an encounter broadcast on Saturday at 9 p.m., assuring its maximum exposure to unsupervised kids.

Almost unnoticed in the final weeks of the campaign was the record government indecency fine levied against another prime-time Fox television product, “Married by America.” The $1.2 million bill, a mere bagatelle to Murdoch stockholders, was more than twice the punishment inflicted on Viacom for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction.” According to the F.C.C. complaint, one episode in this heterosexual marriage-promoting reality show included scenes in which “partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies,” and two female strippers “playfully spank” a man on all fours in his underwear. “Married by America” is gone now, but Fox remains the go-to network for Paris Hilton (“The Simple Life”) and wife-swapping (“Trading Spouses: Meet Your New Mommy”).

What the conservatives don’t realize, Rich writes, is that they’re getting taken for a ride.

It’s in the G.O.P.’s interest to pander to this far-right constituency – votes are votes – but you can be certain that a party joined at the hip to much of corporate America, Mr. Murdoch included, will take no action to curtail the blue culture these voters deplore. As Marshall Wittman, an independent-minded former associate of both Ralph Reed and John McCain, wrote before the election, “The only things the religious conservatives get are largely symbolic votes on proposals guaranteed to fail, such as the gay marriage constitutional amendment.” That amendment has never had a prayer of rounding up the two-thirds majority needed for passage and still doesn’t.

Mr. Wittman echoes Thomas Frank, the author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas?,” by common consent the year’s most prescient political book. “Values,” Mr. Frank writes, “always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won.” Under this perennial “trick,” as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry “to clean up its act” – until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. Mr. Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons – from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing C.E.O. of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican C.E.O. of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing C.E.O. of G.E. (NBC Universal) – are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It’s they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who actually set the cultural agenda Gary Bauer and company say they despise.

But they’re still getting the votes they need to win, until people like Cary and Tara Leslie wake up.

…values voters the Democrats must pander to are people like Cary and Tara Leslie, archetypal Ohio evangelical “Bush votes come to life” apotheosized by The Washington Post right after Election Day. The Leslies swear by “moral absolutes,” support a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and mostly watch Fox News. Mr. Leslie has also watched his income drop from $55,000 to $35,000 since 2001, forcing himself, his wife and his three young children into the ranks of what he calls the “working poor.” Maybe by 2008 some Democrat will figure out how to persuade him that it might be a higher moral value to worry about the future of his own family than some gay family he hasn’t even met.

That’s the challenge for Democrats, but one that can be met if they’re willing to make moral judgments condemning the coarse culture that both Republicans and Democrats exploit for profit. The great triumph of the Republican Party is to not only get people to vote against their pocketbook interests but also offend their moral values and then fail to deliver on that moral agenda.

A woman goes into a pharmacy to get her prescription for birth control pills filled. The pharmacist says, “No, I won’t fill your prescription because I don’t believe in contraception.” Two states pass laws allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill such prescriptions. Ten other states consider the same type of bill. This is not a fairy tale.

Great. The guy who defends torture is to become the new Attorney General.

Jerry Falwell plans to revive the Moral Majority, although this time, he’s calling it the Faith and Values Coalition.

The coalition’s political goals take shape in a three-pronged offensive that it believes will shape Bush’s second term and lead to the nomination of a conservative, pro-life presidential candidate in 2008.

Among the coalition’s stated objectives is the appointment of strict constructionist judges to the U.S. Supreme Court and other federal courts.

It also will push for a Federal Marriage Amendment, which will define marriage as the union of one man with one woman.

After writing yesterday about the need for progressive Christians to speak out, as have many others, there is hope, perhaps just a small first step, but hope.

Battling the notion that “values voters” swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation’s most urgent moral problem was “greed and materialism” and 31 percent said it was “poverty and economic justice.” Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.

But the religious leaders acknowledged that the Christian right had reached more voters than the Christian left. Some said it was time for “moderate and progressive” religious groups, as well as the Democratic Party, to rethink their positions.

“One of the things a few of us are talking about is a reassessment of how the Democrats deal with an issue like abortion — could there be a more moderate ground, where even if they retained their pro-choice stance, they talked about uniting pro-choice people together to actually do something about the abortion rate?” said Jim Wallis, editor of the liberal evangelical journal Sojourners.

If the Democratic Party were to “welcome pro-life Democrats, Catholics and evangelicals and have a serious conversation with them” about ways to reduce teenage pregnancy, facilitate adoptions and improve conditions for low-income women, it would “work wonders” among centrist evangelicals and Catholics, Wallis said.

I’ve heard that criticism from the right: That we progressives advocate abortion but not ways of preventing it. Remember Clinton’s objective to make it legal and safe but rare? Of course, the same charge can be made of conservatives, who advocate against abortion but offer no plausible alternative for those who can’t afford a child.

This isn’t a formal coalition or organization with a specific agenda like Falwell’s new group, but it’s a start.

…Christian leaders argued that many religious Americans do not fall neatly into liberal or conservative camps.

They contended that there is a vast religious middle, including “progressive evangelicals,” “resurgent mainline Protestants” and “socially conservative African Americans,” that could be attracted by biblically based “prophetic” appeals to make peace, fight poverty and spread social justice.

“The values that were promoted most within the conservative religious community were almost always tied to a fear factor, and that was not necessarily the case in the Democratic strategy, and I would say should not be the case,” said the Rev. Welton Gaddy, head of the Interfaith Alliance.

The nationwide telephone poll of 10,689 voters was conducted by Zogby International for the Catholic peace group Pax Christi, the New York-based civic advocacy group Res Publica and the Washington-based Center for American Progress, a think tank allied with Democrats. It had a margin of error of plus or minus one percentage point.

The poll found that 42 percent of voters cited the war in Iraq as the “moral issue” that most influenced their choice of candidates, while 13 percent cited abortion and 9 percent same-sex marriage. Asked to name the greatest threat to marriage, 31 percent said “infidelity,” 25 percent cited “rising financial burdens” and 22 percent named same-sex marriage.

Tom Perriello, an organizer at Res Publica, said the poll shows that “while there may be a solid 20 percent who are very focused on abortion and gay marriage, for most Americans of faith, there are other moral issues of greater urgency, and that’s where the religious middle is.”

Throughout the presidential campaign, opinion polls showed that frequent churchgoers were far more likely to support Bush than his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kerry. Exit polls on Election Day found that 22 percent of voters cited “moral values” as the key to their vote, and they tilted 4 to 1 toward Bush.

The answer to this “God gap,” Perriello said, “is that progressives need to embrace the deep moral critique that people are looking for and make that case on poverty and Iraq, and not just try to talk more about God or outpace the Republicans on gay marriage or abortion.”

Amen.

It’s terrorism, stupid.

No mainstream media wants to touch this.

Fun

I’ve taken a few days off, enjoying perfect weather in the Rockies and reading of the Democrats’ gnashing of teeth and the GOP’s moral superiority.  There was an exchange in the comments section of an earlier post with one conservative’s claim that those of us on the left are condescending.  And while there is an element of truth to that charge, it does surprise me that someone abhors condescension but applauds those who reflect deceit, arrogance and intolerance. 

The discussion about "moral values" is this week’s easy story line written by journalists who are responding to conservative’s PR push that this election was all about morals — and that the only ones who have them are the Christians who seem to care only about homosexuality and abortion.  Indeed, there are those that do:

Asked if their rivals on the left indeed held viable moral values, several conservatives replied with a qualified "yes," suggesting the liberals’ social concerns were valid but not as important as opposition to abortion or same-sex marriage.

"We believe in biblical principles; I’m sure they believe in biblical principles," said Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition of America. "But I don’t understand how they can defend abortion and homosexuality. That’s wrong."

The Rev. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life said poverty was far less urgent a problem then abortion, which he considers genocide.

…Some put the issue even more starkly.

"There is no reconciliation between good and evil," wrote Mary Ann Kreitzer of Les Femmes, an organization of conservative Roman Catholic women. "Voters rejected the party of gay activists, radical feminists, the Hollywood elite, pornographers, death-peddlers, anti-Christian bigots and apostate Catholics."

These are the Christians who think they own the franchise.  No wonder Tom Friedman wrote:

…[W]hat troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don’t just favor different policies than I do – they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is.

…My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends. 

I do, too.  Because while I surely must sound intolerant of Christians to some, it’s only my own "inartfulness."  Earlier I wrote "I can only judge by the conservatives I know. They are not bigoted, selfish or hypocritical, just misguided."  Well, that’s not quite right.  I’m placing bets that most Christians, including the ones I know,  are also not misguided.  It is those that cite their religion as the basis for supporting bad policies that are misguided. 

But I wouldn’t want the conversation to focus on what Christianity means.  Unfortunately, I don’t think politicians have that choice right now.  They must address their religious beliefs, if only because not doing so is corrupted by Republicans as being anti-faith or anti-Christian. 

Democrats must hear the voice of progressive Christians – those who see the disconnect between the religious  right and social policy.  I can’t see how aborting a fetus we don’t know has a soul is immoral but letting 25 million children who do live in poverty isn’t. 

Anyone who isn’t a member of the antiabortion, anti-gay-rights, fundamentalist right is categorized — or caricatured — as someone who checked her values 100 yards from the polling booth.

Well, speaking for the designated "immoral minority," there are a whole lot of folks who believe that starting a preemptive war on false premises is a moral issue. There are a whole lot of people who believe that giving tax cuts to the rich and a deficit to the grandkids is a matter of values.

…The blue candidates will never convert people who believe that homosexuality is a sin, or that the fertilized egg is a human being, or that evolution is a scam taught by secular humanists. But among the not-so-red voters are those who believe in legal protection for gay couples, who value a child with diabetes over a frozen embryo in a fertility clinic. They regard poverty as a moral issue and tolerance as an American value. They don’t want their country racked by the fundamentalist religious wars we see across the world. And they need to hear the moral framework for these views.

Still, the challenge for Democrats is to find a moral voice without tearing down the walls between our secular government and widely divergent religious beliefs in this country. The moralists want not their morals but their religion to dominate.

…"[V]alues voters" who helped keep [Bush] in Washington believe that God needs to be more present in public life. The Ten Commandments in the courtroom, prayer in school, "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance – these are all critical issues to many religious conservatives. They believe that we’ve kicked out God from our lives.

In other words, many religious voters also love Mr. Bush for reasons broader, more vague – and in some ways far more powerful – than merely his positions on specific issues like gay marriages. The professional activists, by contrast, have a very concrete agenda in mind: constitutional amendments on gay marriage and abortion, allowing churches to become more politically active, allowing more prayer in school and more.

What do we teach our children if we tell them in church that God wants them to vote a certain way?  Which prayer in school do we allow?  Or do we spend the hour of class reciting prayers from every religion?

The danger is that if we allow religion a more prominent role in our government at what point does it become a theocracy that is intolerant of minorities?  (I think that has happened elsewhere.)

Even thoughtful conservatives think "moral values" is a red herring caught by the press after an inarticulate poll cited it as a prevailing reason Bush won.   

As Andrew Kohut of the Pew Research Center points out, there was no disproportionate surge in the evangelical vote this year. Evangelicals made up the same share of the electorate this year as they did in 2000. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who are pro-life. Sixteen percent of voters said abortions should be illegal in all circumstances. There was no increase in the percentage of voters who say they pray daily.

It’s true that Bush did get a few more evangelicals to vote Republican, but Kohut, whose final poll nailed the election result dead-on, reminds us that public opinion on gay issues over all has been moving leftward over the years. Majorities oppose gay marriage, but in the exit polls Tuesday, 25 percent of the voters supported gay marriage and 35 percent of voters supported civil unions. There is a big middle on gay rights issues, as there is on most social issues. 

How do we attract that moral majority that is also tolerant, understanding and wishes religion to remain in its proper, private place?

First, we admit to one of the main contentions of many Americans:  We have become a more coarse society.  And some of Democrats’ best friends facilitate it.  Entertainment executives excuse some of the crap they produce by invoking the first amendment.  It’s such an patent lie.  They produce it to make money, not a political point.  They say they support Democrats because they want a more compassionate agenda at the same time they corrupt the morals of impressionable youth for a buck.  I suspect that many Bush voters see gay marriage as less of an issue than the portrayal of sexual mores on TV.  Much of TV fare is sexually sophomoric, but that’s lost on sophomores, much less younger kids.  Someone – and it might has well be Democrats – needs to challenge Hollywood.  I will defend Eminen’s right to stand atop a soap box in front of the White House to rap ad nauseum.  But if someone is making a buck off of it, they are culpable. 

(That said, the coarse language, not to mention war profiteering, of Dick Cheney is no impediment to his re-election.  But that that is lost on right-wingers must remain a little hypocrisy that’s useless to rail against.)

There is a moral center Democrats can appeal to.  They are the tolerant Christians, Muslims, Jews and atheists; they’re those who can hold a personal abhorrence of abortion and gay marriage but recognize that the former is complicated by social policies and the latter is irrelevant to them.  Gays aren’t going to change your daughter’s sexuality, but having been taught about the consequences of irresponsible sexuality and having options in life worth pursuing can mitigate the number of unwanted pregnancies.  But making someone bear a child that cannot be cared for either by the individual or the government is immoral.  If you want to reduce the number of abortions, reduce poverty and ignorance.  If the righteous would focus their energy there, abortions would decline.

Still, Democrats wander aimlessly on the morals issue, afraid to offend. The progressively religious have no one to follow and no one who reflects their moral bearings.  In fact, Democrats espouse moral bearings but do so tenuously.  They’re afraid to preach both compassion and responsibility.  What’s behind the GOP’s "personal responsibility" theme is an attack on the defenseless.  Much of GOP’s agenda seems to reflect an attitude of take responsibility or die.  If a welfare mother refuses to work or avoid pregnancy, the GOP is willing to sacrifice the children.  That is immoral.

Twenty years from now, we’ll have gay marriages, or at least gay civil unions, with all the legal protections enjoyed by bi-racial couples.  But will we have a progressive morality or intolerant and myopic demagoguery that exploits the latest bogeyman? 

The answer may not determine our president.  After all, Bush’s margin was thin.  There are other issues that might turn elections.  Democrats needn’t worry that their religion will determine if they win again.  But the need for a discussion of morals is necessary, if only to help us agree "on what America is."

Update:  Kevin Drum has a good post on the morals issue.