The presidential election was even less polarizing than my old home's congressional politics. Though I was a Bush supporter, I have plenty of friends with about the same political views who opted for Kerry. I understood their calculations, even though I thought they were risking a disatrously Carteresque foreign policy and serious damage to the pharmaceutical industry, to name just two possible outcomes. We simply attached different probabilities to different possible scenarios, and reasonable people can disagree.

But now I'm finally starting to feel like a red state voter. The combination of paranoia and hatred coming from disappointed Democrats is more than a little scary. To take a relatively mild example, this sort of rhetoric is not only fearsomely intolerant but seriously detached from reality. It's not about the actual George Bush, his actual policies (love them or hate them), or his actual supporters. It's a strange emotional exercise, whipping up hate and fear while feeding a Mean Girls sense of superiority.

I got fed up with Republicans in the late-90s because their loudest voices seemed to hate America. They turned me off, and they turned off a lot of other voters. Here's what I wrote after the 1998 midterm elections:

I told you so. The party that hates America will lose. The party that imagines no positive future, offers no "vision thing," will lose. The party that thinks it is better than the American people, that makes large segments of the voting public believe they are its enemy, that convinces people it wants the government to boss them around and destroy the things they love, will lose.

On November 3, that party was Republican. The GOP went down to humiliating defeat, losing close race after close race, plus many that weren't supposed to be close. The party lost its solid grip on the South and collapsed in California. It managed to lose seats in the House, an extraordinary result that even Democratic pundits failed to predict.

And it deserved to lose. Republicans sold out their economic base, invested all their hopes in scandals involving a president not on the ballot, and ran as the party of scolds, pork, and gloom. No wonder their voters stayed home.

This election was a test of the notion that Republicans can scorn anyone who talks about freedom, treat issues as matters of bribery rather than principle or vision, alternate between patronizing and ostracizing immigrants and women, regularly denounce American culture, and generally act obnoxiously toward the country they supposedly represent--and still win, because the Democrats are worse and Clinton is a sleaze.

Back during this summer's Democratic convention I blogged that "now it's the hard-core Democrats who think the country is going to hell--but at least they blame the administration, not the general public." Post-election, alas, they blame their fellow Americans. And when voters feel hated, they respond by voting in droves for the other guy. (Just ask Pete Wilson.)

As Jacob Levy noted during the Democratic convention, the Dems have their own sunny side. But we haven't heard much of it since last summer.

David Brooks's smart and much-linked-to column on Saturday pointed out the same thing, of course. And this piece by Gary Langer, director of polling for ABC News, was a big "I told you so" about the problem of incredibly vague language in the exit polls. Dianne Feinstein and Bill Bennett may think "moral values" means "opposition to gay marriage," but it's just as likely--more, in my opinion--to mean "the candidate's character."

If he can resist the comic temptation to make wild generalizations, Brooks could spend the next several months explaining the complicated reality of middle America to the parochial readers of the NYT.

As for gays, the most depressing aspect of the election is how quickly big-shot Democrats want to run away from gay-friendly policies.

"Our popular vote was absolutely right on," Jim Keyes, the chain's head honcho, told the Dallas Morning News. "We sell a million cups of coffee every day, so our sample size was huge."

As I mentioned earlier in the post about Lupe Valdez's election, the results aren't as bleak for supporters of gay rights as you'd think from listening to triumphant social conservatives or despairing gays.

Nationally, gay marriage is a loser, but civil unions are a big winner, with 35 percent support (and 32 percent in the South). Assume that the 25 percent who back marriage rights (17 percent in the South), and you've got a clear majority (and a slim lead even in the South, where Bush won 32 percent of gay voters). The public is squeamish about "gay marriage," but not about giving gay couples public recognition and legal rights.

Have religious issues become more important in politics because too few Americans go to church?

That is the surprising suggestion of a new working paper by the Harvard economist Edward L. Glaeser and two doctoral students, Jesse M. Shapiro and Giacomo A. M. Ponzetto. (The paper, "Strategic Extremism: Why Republicans and Democrats Divide on Religious Values," is online at http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty /glaeser/papers.html.)

The paper starts with a puzzle: In a majoritarian system like ours, political economists generally predict that candidates will converge toward the center of the spectrum, so as to attract as many votes as possible. This is the "median voter theory." But it doesn't seem to describe what's happened in American politics. On divisive religious issues like abortion, the two parties aren't hugging the center. They're abandoning it.

While most people know that the Republican Party has taken an increasingly strong anti-abortion position, the authors note that the Democratic Party has simultaneously moved in the opposite direction.

In 1976, the Democratic platform said, "We fully recognize the religious and ethical nature of the concerns which many Americans have on the subject of abortion," while terming a constitutional amendment overturning Roe v. Wade merely "undesirable." In this year's platform, by contrast, Democrats declared that they "stand proudly" for a woman's right to an abortion, "regardless of her ability to pay."

For the explanation of why this is happening (or at least a good theoretical model of why it may be), read the rest here.

There's neither new Great Awakening, the favorite conservative spin, or "a huge fundamentalist Christian revival," Andrew Sullivan's fear (as usual, he omits the hugely influential Catholic element). What's different today is that fewer, not more, Americans go to church.

Here's a chart that didn't make it into the paper. Thanks to reader Mark Draughn for the HTML coding.

State	Percent attending church at least monthly	Increased probability of voting Republican*
California	37.9%	10.7%
New York	47.5%	9.6%
Illinois	51.2%	6.9%
Texas	56.2%	-1.3%
South Carolina	61.8%	4.2%

*in the previous presidential election, given monthly church attendance, holding other factors, e.g., race, constant

The data are from 1972-2000.

Critics say Measure 37 abandons land-use policies that have defined Oregon as a place that puts a premium on its farms, forests and quality of life.

The measure's approval may reflect a seductive ballot title more than it reflects a movement against land-use planning, said Tim Raphael, spokesman for the no-on-37 campaign.

"When we have to choose between paying landowners or overturning community protections, that's going to be a tough decision for Oregonians," Raphael said. "It will cause us to revisit the question about what our values are and what our approach is."

The measure's passage marks a significant victory for activists who have long opposed Oregon's land-use planning system, one of the most far-reaching in the nation.

They'll have just 30 days to wait until cities, counties and the state are required to start evaluating property owners' claims.

"People understood we can have planning and treat people fairly at the same time," said David Hunnicutt, director of Oregonians in Action. "That's been what's missing."

The law will allow property owners affected by land-use rules to apply for a waiver or compensation for any drop in value. Evaluating landowners' claims -- not counting any payouts -- is expected to cost state and local governments from $54 million to $344 million a year.

We could use a law like that in Dallas, where the local paper's editorial board literallly sees playing with other people's property as a game. Even from the DMN, the cavalier tone of this editorial shocked me. You know, I have a lot of good ideas about how to run a newspaper. Maybe the city should empower me to apply them.

I'm also delighted that editor Steven Pinker selected one of my Substance of Style-related essays, originally published in Men's Journal, in this year's edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004.

Both the book and the Best of the Blogs competition are worth checking out for their diverse and interesting offerings.

Fareed is right about the media pressure for guests to be partisan team players. I just got canceled out of what would have been one of my highest-prestige TV bookings ever because (they told me) top producers had decided I was not firmly enough committed to either side in the election.

Zakaria is certainly right about TV bookers. They're only interested in partisans. (Even Katrina vanden Heuvel, who's far to the left of the Democratic mainstream, plays a partisan Democrat on TV. Ditto Pat Buchanan and the GOP.) But my friend's own experience demonstrates an error in Zakaria's argument: Ritualistic partisanship doesn't come from ideological think tanks, which are in fact quite diverse. It reflects what works in the political and news-as-entertainment markets--or, at least, what TV bookers think works.

I did notice an exception to the partisan rule election night. At least on ABC, if you have a Newsweek column, they'll let you on.

We say that Britain has an unwritten Constitution and we here in the USA have a written Constitution. But there are unwritten elements to our public life which are of great importance. The concession speech at the end of an election is an important part of our "unwritten" Constitution.

The concession speech puts an end to the campaign and the mindset of the campaign. It reminds people that the campaign is not everything, that some things are more important even than the hoped for victory and the sadness of defeat, that democracy itself is the most important thing. Done correctly, the concession speech drains the bitterness and anger, it gets people to focus on the future. The candidate takes the failure on himself and, in that way, absolves his followers of responsibility for the defeat and allows them to go on their way with a feeling of closure.

I watched Kerry's concession speech. It was done with class. He struck the right notes. A gesture of regard for the victor, "the fight goes on" for Democrats, but unity is needed, and we should not have anger, etc., and we are all Americans and this is a great country and it is a privilege to be here. It was formulaic, but so are marriage vows. Language on such ceremonial occasions is supposed to be formulaic. Ceremonies are not "empty ritual" but are affirmations of our common life together, of continuity, and they are the glue that holds our immense, disparate society together.

There is a right way to do it. You hate like Hell when your guy has to be the one to do it, but you know it has to be done. To his credit, Kerry did it right.

The ritual was adhered to. The legitimacy of our democratic process was reaffirmed. The Republic remains secure.

God bless America.

Most important, a study at Johns Hopkins shows that infection, not lack of oxygen, causes most cerebral palsy in premature babies--making it a lot harder to sue those ob-gyns for big bucks. Here's the NYT report.

Update: Sundry networks are now calling the Carolinas for Bush. But they shouldn't be close.

Informal polls taken by our store managers indicate that some 70 percent of our customers say they have no intention of reading these books; 15 percent say they will; and 15 percent are undecided. One Kansas City customer said, "I'm buying this book to show people where I stand." Another in New York said, "I'm buying this book because the author agrees with me."

Maybe agit-prop movies should take a hint from book publishers and find a way to sell tickets that don't actually require you to sit through the picture--a new application of Fandango, perhaps.

Meanwhile, closer to home, voters in Arlington (Texas, that is) will decide tomorrow whether to build the Cowboys a new palace. That stadium, too, would require seizing lots of local property. And, reports the DMN, some property owners are wondering if such seizures are legal--or will remain so for long.

Owners of homes or small businesses in Arlington may question whether it's legal for a city to take their property so that a large business such as the Dallas Cowboys can use it.

Attorneys and property owners fighting in eminent domain cases across the country are essentially asking the same thing: They are attacking the very idea that eminent domain can be used to sweep aside property that is not blighted in the name of economic development.

The power of a government to condemn private property used to be limited to taking property for a public use, such as a road, park or school.

Critics point to a 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case, Berman vs. Parker, which ruled that a blighted area in Washington, D.C., could be condemned so a private developer could remake it, as expanding eminent domain beyond the founding fathers' intent. By 1981, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Detroit could take hundreds of homes and businesses in the Poletown neighborhood to make way for a General Motors plant.

Now the U.S. Supreme Court will revisit the issue in a case that could revise its 50-year-old ruling.

The Connecticut Supreme Court recently ruled that the city of New London could condemn a nonblighted neighborhood so a builder could put in more upscale developments. Attorneys for the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Justice appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, asking two interlocking questions: Can a city take land from one set of private owners to give it to another private owner? And can it do so when the "public purpose," essentially, is to generate more tax revenue for the city?

In Arlington, for example, there are some properties southwest of Ameriquest Field that city officials have described as "blighted." But some of the structures are merely modest working-class homes or older apartment complexes – buildings perhaps more like those in New London than like blight in Washington, D.C.

For more on the New London case, see the Institute for Justice site here. And, if you're looking for end-of-the-year contributions, IJ is a worthy cause.

The answer is here. Really (though there's wiggle room). You can also read what CH thinks of Dallas women.

Actually, I ignored guys like that in college. (It was the Eliot Spitzers and Bob Giuffras who gave me the creeps.) They were fine in their place. I just didn't want to date them.

Which brings me to this election. I'm not picking a boyfriend here either, or, for that matter, an intellectual mentor. Given the current balance of power in Congress, there are only two things the president can significantly affect: foreign policy and regulatory policy. I prefer Bush to Kerry on both. It's a cold calculation.

Though I supported the war in Iraq, I never thought it would be easy. In fact, I thought things would be worse. It was a high-risk venture, requiring long-term commitment to secure long-term, strategic gains. I wish Bush had warned the public more about the inevitable difficulties, but I do not feel betrayed. I feel no need to lash out at the president.

Voting is an expressive activity, but it need not be emotional. Andrew Sullivan's invocation of "The deep emotional bond so many of us formed with the president back then" does not apply to me. Bush leaves me cold and always has. I never wanted to hang out with him, so I don't take our policy differences personally. I never idolized his leadership, so I don't feel he's failed me. He gets my vote in part because I don't identify with him. He's just a hired hand, and he's better than the alternative.