Roger Franklin: US Democrats feeling blue and seeing red

COMMENT

The morning's email haul summed up what happened better than any editorial writer's reflection on the divided hearts and minds of the American electorate.

The first message was from a friend in Washington, a former military guy and proud son of the American heartland.

"Can you believe it!" he gushed. "Let the Democrats just try and steal this one. Bush by 2 million votes!!!!"

Actually, it's closer to three million votes, but not to worry.

Then came the second email, penned by a TV news producer at one of the Big Three networks. A couple of weeks ago, at a Long Island barbecue to celebrate her 50th birthday, she shot me a dark look when I said John Kerry struck me as neither honourable nor coherent, and that if foreigners were able to vote, mine would go to George W. Bush.

Well, the beer was flowing, the mood relaxed, the election still far enough away for the observation to raise only eyebrows, not tempers.

"You and I have known each other for 20 years," she wrote. "Thing is, I'm thinking of what you said and it's got me real angry. A lot of things have me angry tonight, but if I see you any time soon, I'm going to say something I regret."

There followed a gently worded disinvitation to a weekend party. "Until I get a handle on my emotions, best that we don't see each other."

Oh, did I mention that she also happens to be my son's godmother?

That's America in the cold November morning of the second Bush Administration - one country, two minds, and neither on speaking terms with the other.

Look at maps of the election result. Look at the red states that went for Bush and the blue blocs that backed Kerry, and the picture couldn't be plainer or the contrast more starkly drawn.

Up in the Northeast, a solid blot of blue. In his native Massachusetts, Kerry carried 80 per cent of the vote.

In New York City, it wasn't much less. Chicago, same story, as also in the blue blotches around the westernmost of the Great Lakes.

Then it is nothing but uninterrupted red to the West Coast, where Democratic voters secured all the territory from Canada down to Mexico. When the topography is broken into individual counties, the pattern becomes even more obvious.

Chart the pockets and swathes of mutual incomprehension, and it's clear that Kerry owed the states he carried to urban voters. In the small towns and hayseed precincts, it was Bush all the way.

Yesterday, the ballots counted and the lawyers sent home with the lawsuits unfilled, Kerry and Bush were each making the requisite noises about the need to reach out and bind the wounds inflicted by the bitter and deeply divisive campaign.

Well, talk is cheap, and the opponents' exhortations to strive for common ground and unity must have rung hollow to even their own practised ears.

The trouble was that the Republican victory was so total, so absolute, there is almost nothing but incomprehending resentment in which Democrats can take refuge.

They have been left with nothing, and soon they will have even less.

Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader in the Senate, was turfed out of his seat. In Louisiana, the state has its first Republican senator almost since the Civil War. In the 100-member Senate, Republicans now have 55 members. In the House, their new majority will be beyond comfortable.

Democratic sympathisers with deeper pockets funded a huge get-out-the-vote effort, yet it all came to nought. They slipped a little ground with blacks and a lot more with Hispanics.

They brought in Bruce Springsteen and rap impresario P. Diddy and dotted their podiums with Hollywood's brightest lights in an effort to whip up the youth vote, but none of that did a jot of good.

What Kerry's operatives thought would be their trump turned out to be a joker. The twentysomethings either stayed away from the polls or, if they didn't, voted like their elders.

And now for the Democrats it will get worse. Last week the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, 80, was taken to hospital for emergency cancer treatment.

If he doesn't die, he'll retire and with absolute control of Capitol Hill and the mandate of his winning margin, Bush can pretty much appoint anyone he chooses. And since justices are appointed for life, he'll nominate candidates with a good 20 or 30 years ahead of them.

The blue states will scream, but the red ones won't say boo and again, to understand why, go back to the map, where the issues that coloured the results speak volumes.

In Middle America, voters rejected a slather of referendums aiming to legalise gay marriage.

In the blue pockets, that is seen as tantamount to bigotry of the first order, at least by those for whom it is the single issue that dwarfs all others.

For the urban blacks, gay rights are insignificant and, in some cases, actually opposed by the same leaders who urged their flocks to pray for a Kerry victory. For them, the goal is racial set-asides, quotas and affirmative action campaigns.

Then there are the unionists, whose head offices went all out to bring Kerry home a winner, dedicating tens of millions of dollars and millions of manhours to the cause. They don't much care about gays or blacks; their interest is for stronger labour laws and a set of more sympathetic ears in Washington.

Bush by contrast rallied his forces to standards of standards. Those big-city vices and factional passions have no place in his America, where gays are tolerated but not encouraged and black faces, except in the South, relatively uncommon.

That was the coherent vision he took to the campaign trail. And that was why he carried the popular vote by such a handy margin.

So where do the Democrats go now? Their winnowed ranks leave little choice: Hillary Clinton's door. With the party decimated and in disarray, she is the only remaining star on the team. Daschle is gone, so she will gain attention by default in the Senate. The nomination will be hers for the taking.

Can she erode that block of red running the length of the country? You better believe she's going to try.