The blogosphere is awash in finger-pointing, blame-placing, and general despondence. Kerry supporters are perplexed as to how they could have possibly lost this election. From their perspective, Bush represented an easy target. After all, he waged an unpopular war in Iraq based on false information, the economy has been in the tank, and the world hates us. Besides, Bush is an idiot, right? John Kerry should have cake-walked his way to Pennsylvania Avenue.

Instead, Kerry did worse than Al Gore. Bush will serve another four years. The Republicans expanded their margins in both the Senate and the House. Bush will have the chance to name several Supreme Court justices.

What happened? Well, a lot of factors seem to be at play here.

First, Kerry was not a very good candidate. If you look at the 3 most recently elected Democratic presidents — Johnson, Carter, and Clinton — the one common factor among them is their Southern roots. Kerry was undeniably a New England liberal, more like Michael Dukakis than John F. Kennedy, despite Kerry’s best efforts to cast himself as the second coming of Kennedy. Early in the primary season, Howard Dean dominated the polls and the headlines, but when it came time to vote in Iowa and New Hampshire, Democrats got cold feet and Dean self-destructed. Rather than going for a solid Midwesterner like Dick Gephardt, the Democrats latched onto Kerry simply becase he was “anybody but Bush.”

Not a great way to start your campaign, and Kerry did his best to underwhelm voters. He didn’t communicate a clear message on the war or foreign policy. Did he support the war or not? Will he remove troops from Iraq? I still don’t know. He sounded a little too much like an internationalist when the talked about a global test. His views on abortion and gay marriage were clear as mud. His economic plan didn’t sound very substantive. Bottom line, Kerry tried to please everyone by standing for nothing.

Second, the get out the vote road runs two ways. The best efforts of Democrats to register new, young voters was matched by Karl Rove’s efforts to rouse evangelical Christians — white AND black — from their pews and into voting booths. Young people didn’t vote any more than they have for the last 40 years. Those that did represented the new face of the Reagan Youth — conservative and pro-active. They grew up with the Gipper, and can remember Reagan’s steady optimism in the face of the Cold War.

Third, the world isn’t red vs. blue. The liberals always blame the conservatives for seeing the world in starkly binary terms — Christians vs. Muslims, gays vs. straights, blacks vs. whites. But in the wake of Kerry’s defeat, I’ve seen more of this us vs. them mentality coming from the left than from the right. The left loves to paint Republicans as backwater, uneducated Bible-thumpers, unable to grasp the nuances of American liberalism. That’s the kind of thinking that sent Kerry back to Nantucket.

America is a diverse mosaic of cultures, ethnicities, and religions. Conservatives realize this, and for the most part, have no problem with it. The conflict arises when conservatives begin to feel like their values are being compromised in the name of diversity. This is where the gay marriage debate is at today. I believe religious conservatives really have no problem if Steve and Mike live together as life partners and receive all the state and federal benefits that married couples do. They just don’t want you to call it marriage because that’s a religious term. They see this move as an assault on their values. To them, it’s a matter of keeping your values out of our church, and we’ll keep ours out of your bedroom.

The same mentality can be applied to foreign policy, abortion, taxes, etc. This is where liberalism and conservatism differs. Liberals are always trying to use government as a tool to change people’s values. Accept me, help me, love me. Conservatives only want government to preserve their values. They don’t hate gays, or blacks, or Muslims, or any other perceived group of victims. They simply hold their beliefs very closely and would prefer not to see them trampled on by the government.

In part, this explains why conservatives turned out to support Bush. While the left spent so much energy mocking Bush and literally burning him in efigy, the right quietly continued promoting its values to anyone who would listen, including millions of blacks and hispanic voters who share the same values. By some accounts it was a battle of hatred for Bush vs. love of country.

The left can’t understand this. Until they stop demonizing Republicans like Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Santorum, and Scalia as evil and until they stop caricaturing all the red states as vast wastelands of dim-witted simpletons, they will continue losing ground.

The Democratic party do some serious soul-searching in the next 4 years. They need to ask themselves if there is room in their party for religious voters? Pro-life voters? How will the Democratic party wage a serious war on terrorism? Will they support the military? Will they bow down to the UN?

In answering these questions, they might no longer have room for Howard Dean and Al Sharpton. They have to come to grips with that. The party needs to chancge, because it’s on the verge of irrelevance.