Catherine,
Good points. Are married families to be added to the list of standard Democratic hate-groups?
It seems to me the essence of the problem is “reality bifurcation”, i.e., that what the Democrats and the MSM talking heads think is reality is sharply contrasted with what most of us here at Roger’s place view as reality. It’s the Pauline Kael phenomenon. Knucklehead has also addressed this in one of these threads. Did the Democrats lose the 2000 election or were they cheated? Are we in Iraq to fight terrorists and their supporters or to grab oil? Was Afghanistan about bringing Democracy and ending tyranny or was it about building an oil pipeline? We have to first agree on what the basic facts are or we can’t make any progress in our public debates.
The democratic form of government works because when one party loses they reassess their view of reality. If that fails to happen then the system deteriorates. People lose faith in the civil religion. What is critical at this juncture is that the Democrats reassess their view of reality. If they refuse then we will have more of the same divisiveness in the future. The quotation you cited does not hold out great hope in this regard. If they believe, once again, that they haven’t really lost, that they were simply outgunned by a vast collection of religious nutcases etc. etc., then nothing will change.
Personally, as knucklehead said, I am not a religious nutcase and don’t even really consider myself “conservative” (as I’m sure John Moore would agree!), yet I found many reasons not to vote for Kerry. Like you I was ABK. By continuing to rudely brush aside my real concerns while lumping me in with the standard Democratic hate-groups, the Democrats are merely continuing to assure that they will never get my vote, or the votes of the other millions just like me whom I believe to be out there. Nor by pursuing this path will they even manage to understand my concerns.
Sooner or later it’s necessary to come back to reality. Maybe they should spend some quality time reading this blog, instead of issuing kneejerk wholesale condemnations of “digital brownshirts”.
