Progressives have always believed that if our base turned out to vote, we would win. On Tuesday, our base voted in record numbers yet we lost. The story here is not about voting machines and election chicanery---it is that secular Republicans and Christian fundamentalists now represents a majority of the American electorate, and these groups cannot be won to the Democratic side through populist appeals or the right "framing" of issues.

As I sat in the Cincinnati ACORN office watching the Ohio returns come in, I felt confident that Kerry would win the state. We had carried out the largest African-American turnout in the city's history, and I had heard similar reports from our offices in Toledo and Cleveland. If our targeted infrequent and first-time voters were rushing to the polls, I reasoned that this would add enough to the Gore numbers in 2000 to carry the state.

With 25% of the vote reported, Kerry was actually leading Bush in Hamilton County. Although the county includes Democratic Cincinnati, it is largely Republican and Bush won the area by twelve points in 2000. Further, the vast majority of Cleveland and Toledo had yet to be counted, which meant that the early returns were from more conservative parts of the state.

As 50% of the returns came in, Cleveland---where long lines kept polls open after hours-had still not been counted and no new votes from Toledo had come in. Bush had taken a small lead in Hamilton, but Kerry was clearly outdoing Gore in the county.

All this time Bush led Kerry by around four points. But when the next 25% of the votes came in, and it included much of the Democrats core turf, Bush's margin had barely narrowed. I was not familiar enough with Ohio's suburban and rural counties to recognize how their votes could have offset Cleveland and Toledo, but they apparently did. It then became clear that the Bush would carry Ohio and win the election.

The unprecedented high turnout in Cincinnati ultimately resulted in Bush winning Hamilton County by only six points, half of his margin over Gore. Such a result would be consistent with a Kerry victory in Ohio had the gains in Cincinnati not been more than offset by a seemingly record turnout of fundamentalist Christians in the rural areas of the state.

(I should note that Cincinnati voters broke from the national trend and repealed the city's law prohibiting the passage of anti-gay discrimination measures. The voters also renewed the city's school levy, a result clearly fueled by the large African-American turnout)

I think what I saw firsthand in Ohio was repeated in Florida and Iowa. The Democratic base was rallied to the polls as never before, but they were simply outnumbered by the combination of secular Republicans and fundamentalist Christians.

We did not see it coming, but Tuesday's election culminates the twenty-five year transformation of the Christian Coalition into the chief base of the Republican Party. The reason we did not recognize the potential electoral power of this trend is that in 1988, 1992, and 1996 the Republican Party ran secular Presidential candidates who were unable to rally the base to the polls.

In 2000, George W. Bush played down his religious fundamentalism and lost the popular vote. He then spent the next four years playing up to his religious backers, and those that stayed away from the polls four years ago showed up this week.

Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both won elections due to strong turnout from the evangelical base. If you look at the Republican Senate candidates who won yesterday, all are either part of the fundamentalist community or strongly loyal to this constituency.

It is no coincidence that the only Republican candidate who lost an open seat was Colorado's Peter Coors, head of the beer company that bears his name. Coors' call for lowering the drinking age to 18 did not sit well with the state's huge fundamentalist base (the winner, Ken Salazar, opposed Coors' proposal).

When voters elect Senators like Kentucky's Jim Bunning (who announced he had not read a newspaper for six weeks and accused his opponent of physically assaulting Bunning's wife) and Oklahoma's Dr. Tom Coburn (yes, I was naive in thinking this nutcase would lose), these contests are not about "the issues." Rather, the Christian base will support any Republican who opposes abortion rights, supports school prayer, and endorses the balance of their theocratic agenda.

Some attribute the record evangelical turnout to gay marriage measures in eleven states. But if these initiatives played a major role in stimulating fundamentalist turnout, then turnout would not also have spiked in states lacking such initiatives. My early reading of turnout numbers does not support such a link, and none of the dozens of Bush ads I saw in Ohio linked the President to the state's gay marriage measure (which the Ohio Republican political establishment joined Democrats in opposing)

Most observers thought it strange that Bush spent the entire campaign ignoring undecided voters while playing to his base. But that's because myself and others thought Bush needed to go beyond his right-wing base to win, an assumption that was disproved on Tuesday.

Progressives view political campaigns as being about issues. We want our candidates to address a long laundry list of issues, and we saw Iraq, the economy, and the health care crisis as heading the list for November.

But the Christian fundamentalists only have one issue---a candidate's commitment to reducing the separation between church and state. These voters may lack health insurance, jobs, and be angry about Iraq, but what determines their vote is whether the candidate opposes abortion, supports school prayer, and believes the Ten Commandments should be posted in public buildings. Few Democrats meet this test.

That's why the new buzzword to explain this election---"moral values"-is so nonsensical. Fundamentalists did not vote for Bush based on some objective moral test; rather, they voted for a fellow born-again evangelical Christian who shares their theocratic agenda.

Democrats cannot successfully appeal to "moral values" because the term is merely a code word for the Christian Coalition agenda. Framing the killings in Iraq or the lack of health care in America in moral terms will not influence the religious right.

The media uses the term "moral values" because they are afraid to use the more honest term: Evangelical Christian values. Bush's appeal was to the political agenda of conservative evangelical Christians, not to any conventional sense of morality.

This election not only threw out progressives' gospel about higher turnout, but it also disproves the commonly-held view that populist economic appeals can sway white working-class fundamentalists to our side. Times are tough in Ohio, but if you believe George Bush is God's messenger, a full-scale Depression would not change your vote.

Rather than recognize the structural and demographic problems Democrats now face, its much easier to blame John Kerry, the Democratic Party, or voting irregularities. But how anyone can disparage a presidential candidate who galvanized the Party's base as never before is beyond me.

In fact, as someone who was not a fan of Kerry before he became the nominee, I have no hesitation saying that from mid-September on he ran a terrific campaign. He destroyed an incumbent President in three straight debates and ran the most populist Democratic campaign in memory.

I think the reason there is so much sadness out there is not simply that Bush won, but that a person who would have been a great liberal president lost.

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