The main basis of that analysis seems to be the rather striking fact that "moral values" were the number one issue of the largest bloc of the electorate. That, however, strikes me as a statistical artifact caused by the exit pollsters' decision to list "Iraq" and "terrorism" as two separate issues rather than, as they did in 2000, as a unified national-security or foreign-policy issue. Put the two together and you get a 34 percent bloc -- larger than the 22 percent for moral values, and larger than the combined 32 percent for the Democratic strong points on jobs, health care, and the economy.
"Terrorism" voters broke heavily for Bush, and "Iraq" voters broke heavily (though not as heavily) for Kerry, probably because to many Bush supporters Iraq is "the central front in the war on terrorism" or some such thing. Be that as it may, according to my calculations Bush got almost 60 percent support among this combined group of national-security voters. This is your swing group. Values people went overwhelmingly for Bush and economy people went overwhelmingly for Kerry; it's the national*security vote that was close enough to have been within reach but that was not, in practice, reached.
In a way this would be more reassuring than my fears of an insurmountable cultural divide as expressed earlier; in a way it's worrisome because it suggests that the Democrats have still failed to fully articulate a theory of national security to compete with the "Bush Doctrine" in the 'Global War on Terror". That Iraq by virtue of our presence there now has become part of the Global War on Terror (an oblique and unhelpful description of the true underlying conflict, in my opinion) by now appears fairly evident, but judging it before the fact its primacy in the administration's strategic calculus seems to me to be highly misplaced, and I don't want to see it repeated under the belief that it represents a winning strategy. The American voter may be convinced that George W. Bush's policies, in Iraq or elsewhere, are protecting him or her from terrorist attacks (or perhaps more properly that John Kerry's would fail to sufficiently do so?), but I am not — in fact, I'm fairly convinced that George W. Bush and at least a large part of his administration doesn't understand the origins, motivations, or (chiefly non-state) nature of the terrorist threat. I'm fairly certain he and his people lack the ability and the inclination to work with or enlist other allies to create meaningful and lasting insitutional barriers to nuclear proliferation. And I'm afraid that his historically antagonizing relations with the Muslim world may be further exacerbating the issue of militant Islamist recuritment instead of working effectively to drain the swamp. The fact that we are still awaiting a real clear resolution on a number of fronts may have allowed Bush to escape Kerry's criticisms of mismanagement as of this moment; its too soon in some ways to tell what effects the Bush Doctrine (to the extent that any coherent one does exist) will have on our security, since it is still playing out in Iraq and Afghanistan today. How to communicate this all to the voter without scaring them into a defensive crouch and how to craft a viable security policy while in the opposition away from the instruments of power is difficult to say, and it may be that as of this election Democrats have failed to offer a comprehensive alternative to the incumbent's own strategic vision. I'm not sure what sort of rallying theme you can package that sort of program under for the American voter with a short attention span.. "Democrats: Taking the Time to Do It Right" maybe? I honestly dunno.
...
The formative years of my young adult life are going to be forever shaped and characterized by eight years of a Bush presidency! Aaaaaaaaaaagh!
*breathe* Ok, I'm fine now. For a bit anyways. Time for a break.