Earlier this year an Indiana University doctoral student in history asked me what I thought of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. I replied that I had real problems with it: the principal one being that in Moore’s rendition of the past four years, neo–conservatism simply didn’t exist.

I have written on the neocons often and at length, but I’ve never taken the deterministic view that everything that’s happened in foreign and national security policy is their sole responsibility; yet it’s impossible, I said, to really understand why and how what has happened has happened without some exploration of the “persuasion” (to use Irving Kristol’s phrase) that has played a key role in shaping current realities. What was needed was not abuse or mockery – Paul Wolfowitz fellating his comb (as in Moore’s film) – but a real examination of the motivations, actions and influence of Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, and their co–thinkers.

This doctoral student simply said: “Look, it’s effective propaganda that will get people to vote against Bush. That’s all that matters.”

If only! I had a lot of exchanges like this with Democratic voters here this year. I’ve listened to them express everything from shock to contempt to anger at the way the Republican base (in particular conservative Christians) applies the faith usually reserved for the existentially unknown to the demonstrably knowable in the service of wishing away unpleasant realities to rally to re–elect their leader. I’ve listened to them often inchoately fulminate, or toss out strings of factoids and preen as if their mere mention assures victory. I found them maligning the notion that there was any one good possible reason that anyone might ever vote for George W Bush.

All of which troubled me greatly, because in terms of articulation, these didn’t sound like Democratic voters I’d interviewed here and elsewhere in 1992 and 1996; indeed, they reminded me in tone and converse substance of frothing–at–the–mouth right–wingers I’d interviewed in my earlier days. I have no scientific public opinion data to back this up, but at least anecdotally, I came to conclude that a lot of Dems were angrily dwelling in a universe parallel to that of their loathed opposites, and that the Kerry campaign seemed to be at least passively enabling it in a way that wouldn’t be good, in either the short or long term.

Predominantly defined by a need for validation of sheer contempt for Bush and his foreign policy, this realm was also hallmarked by a hostility to even the most necessary constructive criticism of the Kerry campaign, on the theory that to do so would create an opening the right would exploit; a disinterest in the notion that there should be organisation around new, viable ideas that could translate into political and policy change; and a near–total unwillingness to consider the notion that in order to best the opposition, you must first understand it.

Conversations on the frontline

Though I wasn’t asked to write anything on the election this year, I did, nonetheless, keep notes in my journal of conversations with others on the subject. By July I chose to devote a blank page to cataloguing the assertions of Kerry voters I met in daily life here in Indiana – assertions that were often repeated and considered articles of faith. A sampling:

“Fahrenheit 9/11 is going to get so many new people to vote against Bush, he’s toast.”

“With all the money moveon.org has raised and all the commercials and web stuff they’re doing, Bush is going down.”

“Almost all new voters, and certainly almost all of new young voters, are going for Kerry, and that’s why he’s gonna win.”

“Bush is totally fucked because the military will vote against him.”

“Kerry’s going to win because Democrats dominate the photosphere, and bloggers are going to help Kerry win, especially the ones who are raising money.”

With the exceptions of an assured Kerry win, almost all of these were undoubtedly true: they certainly did contribute to turning out some portion of the vote for Kerry. But of all the Democrats and progressives I talked to over the course of the year, the overwhelming majority were either completely dismissive of, or hostile to, even considering any evidence or theories to the contrary.

For example, I had a revealing conversation with an old source, a longtime Republican political operative. He admitted that the Bush campaign was “not unconcerned” about its prospects of winning the election, but said that Republicans were confident in their ability to ensure that every Republican who had relocated – from city to suburb, suburb to exurb, exurb to rural – was currently registered, and thus to turn out their substantial base like never before.

I later saw an article to this effect in the Wall Street Journal. When I brought these points up in conversation with some Democratic–voting friends out here, some of the choicer responses included, “There aren’t that many Republicans” to “The Wall Street Journal is just right–wing propaganda” to “Our numbers are greater”. None of the people who spoke those lines cited any actual numbers, or made a distinction between the WSJ‘s reporting (often inconvenient for the administration) and its over–the–top right–wing op–ed pages. Things just were like this.

When I raised the possibility in a few conversations that the gay marriage issue would, along with the Republican get–out–the–vote effort, likely galvanise an already reliable base to crucially greater heights, I was told, among other things, that it wouldn’t because, “Look at how popular Queer Eye and Will and Grace are” and “That can’t happen in a country where Angels in America got such good ratings.” Good luck trying to make the case that TV ratings might not be a good indicator of voting patterns.

When the matter of economics came up – which, tellingly, it often didn’t – I’d recommend my friend and colleague Thomas Frank’s What’s The Matter With Kansas?, an excellent and accessible explanation of how the right has been so successful at getting a key swathe of the electorate to vote against their own economic interests. A significant minority of voters of 25 years old and over, and an arguable majority of the vaunted “new, young voters,” didn’t seem to care.

From either of my two bases in America (Washington, DC and Bloomington, Indiana) this year, I feel as though I have witnessed both a betrayal and a self–immolation of an impassioned groundswell of Democratic voters who were locked in a fatally dysfunctional relationship with a poorly–led campaign.

The next experiment

Would it have cost Kerry votes if, rather than issue a blanket endorsement of the 9/11 commission recommendations, he had scorned it as the worst kind of bipartisan Washington establishment rubbish that it is; or rallied people against suggestions of the sort that a government of, by and for the people shouldn’t reconsider or even discuss its foreign policy?

Would it have cost him if, instead of recycling Clinton economic team nostrums, he chose to craft a necessary populist indictment of the WalMart–isation of the economy, accessibly explaining to citizens that paying workers low wages to keep low prices is a long way away from higher wages driving demand?

It is almost an article of faith amongst the most impassioned Kerry voters I have known that, despite a history replete with cataclysmic political developments at home and abroad, a second Bush term makes expatriating a reasonable idea.

As far as I’m concerned, anyone who feels that way can go. If this country is indeed exceptional, it is so not because of it’s unrivaled power, but because it exists as an experiment. I don’t believe the experiment is over, and I don’t want anyone around who does. And I don’t believe, as some progressives do, that the silver lining exists in simply waiting to exploit the results of the eventual self–destructive overreach that emboldened Republicans often commit.

What progressives need to do is craft policies of imagination and integrity that, with resonant and affirming language, frame matters of economic and national security in terms that are moral but not sectarian, that appeal to the better angels of not just our natures, but our imaginations and intellects as well.