From the moment George W. Bush became President of the United States I was convinced that he'd be dispensed with after one term. He had lucked out as the relatively unknown and tragically misunderstood beneficiary of Al Gore's lacklustre campaign, but as President he was in deep over his head and his backers were battling against the major trends of recent history. None of his polls convinced me otherwise. Even on top he was rotten to the core, and I clung to a residual faith that the American people would never deliberately do something so foolish as to re-elect him. Cloaked by my beliefs, I took the polls indicating that he still had a chance to be illusions. I followed the race closely, and learned to like if not love John Kerry. I was impressed by his debates, and fortified by his growing aggressiveness, which to my mind scored more often than not. Late in the campaign, I reassured myself by noting that "we want this one more than they do." Of course, I knew that to be a fallacy: regardless of whether it was true or not, the idea that one can make something real by willing it is patently false.

But today we know that Bush won and Kerry lost, and that an already pliable Congress has moved very slightly toward Bush. Today we know that instead of turning a new page with an administration that might work to heal some of the serious problems we face, we will have to suffer through four more years of Bush shit. At this point it's impossible to project how bad those years will be, but it is certain that this election has cost us four years of opportunity to work on problems that are bad and getting worse. And the potential downside of Bush's agenda, abetted by even more power and the ever-complacent media, is very grim indeed. But the time for ennumerating those horrors was last week, when I wrote a letter urging everyone to vote for Kerry.

One interesting thing about the election is how closely it tracked the 2000 election. This was an artifact of the electoral college, which effectively carves the U.S. up into "safe" and "battleground" boxes. Kerry won one Bush 2000 state (New Hampshire), while losing two Gore 2000 states (Iowa, New Mexico), and all three shifts were extremely close. The only other states that came close to moving were were Ohio and Nevada (to Kerry) and Wisconsin (to Bush). What makes this stasis so remarkable is that the popular vote margin shifted by four million toward Bush. The most obvious effect of this boxing is that Kerry ran his campaign inside the battleground boxes, with much of his effort put into the so-called "ground game" -- getting out favorable voters on a local level rather than pushing a message. Bush, with more money and maybe more volunteers, matched Kerry in the same boxes, even to the point of making Kerry spend to defend Pennsylvania and Michigan. But Bush was also more effective at running a nationwide message -- it certainly helped that the message was simpler and that he had the presidential pulpit to campaign from. Ohio and Florida, in particular, turned into vast bonfires of campaign cash that had little if any effect on the outcome.

So one effect that boxing has is to burn money in a few select states. Another is to prevent any sort of message from breaking out on a national scale. Conversely, boxing regionalizes issues. Bush gained votes this time was in the lower Mississippi River valley, where Kerry fell off substantially from Gore -- but then Gore didn't win any of those states either, so arguably the real loss was zero. But one effect of this was that Kerry never had any reason to address rural poverty as an issue -- even if he picked up voters in Kentucky or Tennessee he couldn't convert them into electoral votes, so why bother? (He might have had a chance in West Virginia, but put his money into Nevada and Colorado instead, which were better fits for his regional biases.) Consequently, boxing means that people in different states see the campaigns very differently. In a handful of states, voters get bombarded with advertisements. Elsewhere, the only info comes from news soundbites and the local media, which tend to follow or lead their constituents. One effect this time is to make the national popular vote suspect. (Had the New Yorkers who flocked to volunteer in Ohio done similar work in their own safe state, they would likely have produced more votes.)

Kerry's strategic choices were limited by money -- much of the Democratic-leaning money was outside of his control, while Bush had a huge edge no matter how you slice it -- and being the challenger. Within these limits, I think he actually ran a forceful and effective campaign. But he lost, and I think we need to figure out why. I'm not very good at understanding why people voted for Bush -- I try to look at politics through reasoned interests, including a strong appreciation for peace, justice, fair play, and opportunity, none of which are of interest to Bush. But I'll make a few hypotheses about Bush voters. First, Bush gets a lot of support on moralist grounds, and the Republicans were very effective at exploiting the "gay marriage" issue in their favor. Second, militarist culture is deeply embedded, especially in the South, and this favors retaining the Commander in Chief, even through adversity. Third, Bush was able to avoid any appearance of division within Republican ranks -- he kept prominent "moderate" Republicans in the spotlight, got almost all of the usual media backers, and enjoyed relentless cheerleading from the party's pundits -- which comforted his supporters against doubts while making opposing views sound shrill. The latter is the remarkable insider story of the Bush administration, a competency which stands in stark contrast to almost all of their actual policy implementation.

None of these reasons show much grounding in the facts, although it's worth noting that the economy hit different people differently: if you didn't lose your job and/or your insurance, you probably did fine with the low interest rates, housing appreciation, tax cuts, and maybe a small portfolio in guns and pharmaceuticals, and chances are that's all the economy you cared about. There no doubt are people who voted for Bush because that's where their bread is buttered, but that cannot explain more than a small percentage of his 59 million tallies. The overwhelming majority of people who voted for Bush did so on faith: not necessarily their own religion, which might be good for half the total, but out of a conviction that he's the right guy for the times -- regardless of all the evidence to the contrary. The question is how can Kerry or any Democrat break through that sort of conviction? Really concerted efforts at education would be helpful, but I don't think they go far enough. Obviously, a lot of people vote without knowing much about the candidates and issues, and the issues are getting more complex and trickier all the time, while attention spans are thinning out. I believe that the real key is to try to articulate a competing vision of morality. I can give you lots of reasons why Bush is a terrible President, but deep down I believe that the real problem with George W. Bush is that he is a profoundly immoral human being. I'd go so far as to say that he's downright evil, in exactly the same sense that he's proclaimed Saddam Hussein to be evil.

There are several problems with this. Liberals and/or secularists tend to be uncomfortable talking about the morality of other people, and would rather stick to reasoning. (Conservatives have no such compunction, and as such their verbal warfare against liberals and secularists is asymmetrical, for the most part deadly effective.) But reasoning takes time, requires mutual consent, and may in itself be distrusted by people with strong convictions. Politicians have problems too, as they tend to get caught up in each other's messes. If Iraq is symptomatic of Bush's immorality, where does Kerry fit in? It's tempting to say, as many have done, that he's the lesser evil, but if what we seek to do is the replace the bonds of conviction for one candidate with another candidate, we really need something more convincing than a mere lesser evil. I have trouble with this too, both being very committed to reasoning and having often noted that people of strong moral conviction have been responsible for no small amount of murder and mayhem throughout history. But I don't see how we can stop someone like Bush if we don't challenge his morality.

John Kerry was at pains to demonstrate his integrity, his personal morality, his devotion to religion as well as reason. But when he critiqued Bush, it was only on results. By giving Bush a free pass on intents he never challenged Bush's morality. Kerry argued that Bush was incompetent, that he was ignorant, arrogant, foolish, but he never suggested that Bush was any of those things on purpose. Kerry in turn argued that he himself was competent, knowledgeable, earnest, dedicated, etc., but he didn't give us a simple compelling reason to trust him with the job, which is that he is morally right. I think that part of the reason why is that Kerry is himself rather dodgy on key moral issues, like war. Kerry spent much of his campaign trying to convince us that he'd be a more effective warrior than Bush, and this left no opening for questioning why Bush is so fond of war in the first place.

I'm not saying that Kerry would have won had he been more clearly antiwar in the first place, or that a more pristine antiwar candidate would have done better. Bush's militarism is so close to the heart of this country, and so much in favor at this particular moment, that a real antiwar candidate most likely would have fared far worse. But that will remain the case until we discredit that militarism, and that will ultimately turn on differing moral visions. It's not going to be easy to articulate that and put it into play -- most of what we have now is rooted in religion, and the clergy mean to keep it that way, which makes it especially awkward for us atheists. But the world is changing -- becoming more complex and uncontrollable by the day -- and we need some firm vision of morality and politics that works. And we need to be able to convey that to people who don't have much time for the details, the why and wherefores, because most people don't.

Of course, there are other scenarios for surviving and overcoming Bush. The most likely is that Bush will make such a mess of his second term that his now-blind followers will give up in disgust. But that's been given a pretty severe trial by his first term, and he's emerged stronger than ever. Historically mid-term congressional elections (the next one is in 2006) have ran against the President's party, but the Republicans managed to escape that effect in 2002, mostly by treating each race as a separate forum (mostly not on Bush). The Democrats do have the experience of massive volunteer efforts this year, which if duplicated could make an impact in 2006. The current Republican ascendency really started with Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" in 1994. Something like that might focus strongly on countering Bush, but to do so one needs moral principles -- clearly and succinctly articulated, closely bound where possible to accepted morality.

Still, the problem with electoral efforts is that they tend to be played close to the vest, with carefully calibrated soundbite-sized chunks of information. Running a candidate is a fine opportunity to practice education, but winning usually depends on tapping into currents that are already present. There are huge cognitive gaps among the electorate -- people don't understand, for instance, how greater poverty undermines middle class security, or how military might subverts international law, or how defensive wars inevitably produce atrocities, or even how cheap gasoline consumption affects the worldwide environment. Candidates need help even to broach such issues, and that needs to come from a network of think tanks, special interest organizations, and an information architecture, much like the right wing already has working. We need news, analysis, speakers, talking points, skills development, candidate recruitment, resources of all sorts. Much of this is much easier given the Internet and open source principles. We have seen over the past decades the development of a huge right-wing propaganda machine, which has done much to foster politicians like Gingrich and Bush, and we need to counter that, within our principles. The right wing is supported by donors and businesses, and we need a counter to that as well. One can think of many more ways to make our political presence felt: Kerry did, after all, get over 55 million votes, and their interests and concerns should never be forgotten. But one lesson is clear from this election: there is no huge body of non-voting masses out there merely waiting to turn the tide out way.

But redoubling efforts is only something that can be done once we get up off the floor from this defeat. In my pro-Kerry letter I quoted Jack Germond: "We get about what we deserve. So I guess we deserve George W. Bush." I added, "We have one more chance to show that we deserve better." The shock of this election is that a majority of the American people have failed to live up to our most basic hopes. This has become a vain and vindictive country, and politicians like George W. Bush feed on that, then come back and flatter us with talk about how we have enemies who hate our freedom and wealth. And they assert that only their strength and moral clarity can keep us safe, and too many of us believe them, because they like us are vain and vindictive. This in a nutshell is the cycle of the neverending war on terrorism. America's failure is that not enough of its people see through this scam. Those who did will be in no hurry to forgive those who didn't. Bush is still in power, and Bush is still evil. But with enemies like him we will be need friends, and we will need to stick together.

By the way, the Ralph Nader vote was, predictably, totally inconsequential to the result. Someone might try to argue that had Nader appeared on the Ohio ballot he might have taken more votes from Bush than from Kerry. It would be fun to rerun that, but there's still no way to make it compute.