However, life goes on, and while 51% of you who voted may be gloating jubilantly, the rest of us pray that the damage to be inflicted to our country won't be as impactful as feared. It appears that we're more deeply divided than we were in the 2000 election – urban versus rural, coastal versus heartland, college degree versus high school diploma, etc.… Looking over exit poll results and county breakdowns, it's clear that Bush strongholds strengthened, and Kerry bastions in urban areas tilted further to the Democratic ledger. More people voted than ever, and the new Kerry voters were offset by even greater numbers of new Bush voters.

Some post mortem thoughts on Election 2004:

• Northeast liberal Democrats cannot win an election anymore in the U.S. electoral landscape - Southern contenders are 3-1-1 (counting Gore as a tie since SCOTUS decided) while Northeast candidates (including Humphrey and Mondale) are 0-5 since 1962. When LBJ signed voting rights act in the 60s he stated that he had just signed away the southern vote for a generation; well, it's two generations now and counting.
  
  
• Referendums against gay marriage - brought out the evangelical vote in force. (In Arizona, the propositon 200 anti-immigrant measure, which passed overwhelmingly despite bipartisan campaigning against, may have been a factor in guaranteeing AZ did not turn blue). But moral values was the biggest factor for folks going to the polls.
  
  
• War – Most, are still in favor of an unjust, illegal invasion of a sovereign nation that threatened the U.S. not, and actually has served the strategic objectives of the enemy. Ditto for the botched campaign against Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Folks are content with the spoon fed public relations script by neocon spinners that changes like a chameleon.
  
  
• Rural vote - Democrats really have lost touch with rural voters and the issues that concern them, or at least their core perceptions of what the Democratic platform is, and that it includes them, and hasn't sold them out in interest of minority and urban voters. Kerry going duck hunting just didn't fill the bill.
  
  
• The schism between "reality based" voters and being misnformed, I believe. There's no way that if you study the issues, unless you're a diehard partisan oblivous to fact, that 51% of folks can logically vote for someone who's blundered so much and done great harm to working folks. Maybe this is a media issue (meaning that many don't care to use internet and get most of their info from Rush Limbaugh and/or FoxNews). The local library is a wonderous resource that most never ever set foot into, and instead, fill their mind with sound bites and snippets of campaign propaganda or prattling pundits. Factual studies and surveys have illustrated this succinctly.
  
  
• Celebrity, entertainer backlash - I think celebrities, musicians and actors speaking out is a great hinderance to the progressive cause. They really should take a page out of the Republican playbook and funnel that money into think tanks and other ideological campaigns - Republicans have spent billions of dollars on influential think tanks like AEI, Heritage, Hudson Institute, CATO and it's been effective wedge in moving public opinion and influencing legislative actions, and more importantly framing the debate. Democrats have no equivalent organization - the organizations in support are single issue deals or focused on a small set of policy and are pragmatic based. Again, I think people really don't like Hollywood types telling them what they should believe and do - I don't and I'm in agreement with everything Springsteen said on his stump tour. As it is, it serves to give the Republicans a wedge to affix an elitist, out-of-touch tag on their opponents.
  
  
• Fear factor - I think Republicans played "they're coming to get you" card quite well, or at least to the detriment of Kerry. And the scurrilous, uncredible charges by the partisan Swift Boat Veterans probably resonated with a core of voters.
  
  
• 51% - It doesn't matter that we're split down the middle, net effect is a Republican mandate as Bush in his victory speech, referred to it as a broad, nationwide victory. Congress, Senate, POTUS, and SCOTUS will be all lock in step now. And there will be an extremist, partisan agenda enacted that has grave repercussions for our nation. Disparity between rich and poor will grow, poverty will increase, and I believe we're in store for turbulent times ahead. I really pray I am wrong, but at least they're won't be any "blame the Democrat" excuses while they run the country into the ground. Here's a peek of what may be in store.
  
  

My, how we've lapsed in our expectations of government – here is what a another president thought about matters of freedom and justice.

In the future days which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression --everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way-- everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants --everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor --anywhere in the wold.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called "new order" of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception --the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear. Since the beginning of our American history we have been engaged in change, in a perpetual, peaceful revolution, a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly, adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quicklime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands, heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

To that high concept there can be no end save victory.

I hope the discourse can stay peaceful and non-violent. Free speech and the first amendment are going to important as ever in the coming days.