Since the winners get to write history, and since the losers get to be written off as mere whiners, I'd like to congratulate the 59 million people who voted to return George Bush to office.

The exit polls showed those people:

-- Felt Bush was the better man to handle the war on terrorism. Interesting conclusion considering ports are still insecure, borders are still porous, and the 2004 no-bid reconstruction contracts for Iraq are larger than the 2004 budget for the FBI, the primary line of domestic defense.

-- Felt Bush was right in toppling Saddam Hussein. Interesting conclusion, considering the Israelis had the option to wipe out Arafat for years, and they held off because they could not accurately predict if things would be better or worse with Arafat gone.

-- Felt Bush was the better man for keeping taxes low as a way to boost the economy and create jobs. Interesting conclusion considering the U.S. is looking at $400 billion yearly deficits for the duration of the Bush second term, and considering how manufacturing jobs just continue to vanish.

Thing is, even if I don't understand those conclusions, I can discuss them. They are policy issues.

But here's my question. If 21 percent of all voters say their top issue is "moral values," what exactly am I supposed to do with that? What is negotiable, debatable, policy-enactable about "moral values?" In fact, can you even tell me what "moral values" is supposed to mean?

The exit polls suggest these "moral values" are the ones traditionally associated with mainstream Christian churches. Now I'll sidestep the question for a moment as to why gay marriage is wrong because it's against Biblical principles, but the Biblical dictate of stoning adulterers is ignored.

What I need to do here is focus on one moral value that is honored in every religion and every culture -- telling the truth.

The Bush Administration certainly hasn't told the truth on Iraq, or told the truth on who outed the CIA agent as an act of petty political revenge. Neither party is telling the truth about the looming deficit crisis or Social Security meltdown.

The logical conclusion here is if truth is not a moral value, then maybe this "moral values" term is a smokescreen for something else. Maybe something political. Maybe something like your entire way of life is threatened. There's bare titties on the Super Bowl. There's cussing on the radio. And look at them homos getting married.

I suspect that most of the 25 million Christian conservatives who voted for Bush, including millions of rural, blue collar types, got their sense of right or wrong while slitting their own economic wrists. I doubt they even noticed. The big currents in this country are not red and blue states or black and white people, but the rich against the poor. It's not God's will that the factory that sustained your small Midwestern city is closing down, it's politics, tax law and economic policies.

Final point: Those red counties in Ohio that saved the Bush presidency? I grew up there, working in those fields and small businesses. I'm writing from Virginia, but make no mistake, they are my home. And jobwise, they are a disaster. I'm living proof of it, another Sun Belt migrant who moved in search of a job.

When it comes to that part of flyover country, I know how these people live, how they think, how they feel, and I can tell you for a fact that are not ideological people but practical people. They would love to have a plain spoken politician offering practical answers to their problems, not empty promises and impossible claims. But if all you have to offer is political blather, those folks are going to tune you out and turn to what's important to them. And that's values.

If Democrats wish to return to power, there's a simple place to start.

Have something to say.

-30-

One week before the election, a one-hand memo on the deep divisions facing the United States of America.

• President Bush turned an attack into a war and the sheeple of the U.S. let him get away with it.

A war brings rationing, tax hikes or war bond drives, a draft, and any number of shared sacrifices. If this terror thing were a real war, and not a politically savvy, media-ready assertion, Congress would not have sat in session for the fewest number of days since 1948, and it would not have taken 96 days (and counting) to implement the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission. Congress is proof that it's business as usual in Washington, with $145 billion in tax breaks to corporations and a pay raise for themselves. Republicans can't have it both ways, but they sure do try -- Bush saying over and over America is safer, Cheney saying over and over that the wolves are at the door. The entire Bush Administration policy is utterly nonsensical, as if in World War II, after Pearl Harbor, America had decided the proper response was to invade Australia and turn it into a domino of democracy in the Pacific.

• The Democrats face extinction as a serious political party.

If the Howard Dean / Joe Trippi theory does not come true -- that the election will be won by millions of new voters turning up at the polls -- the red-state, blue-state map will raise a serious question as to the future viability of a Democratic coalition that dates back 70 years. The Gingrich vision -- social conservatives and government tax haters -- will have been so dominant, Democrats will resemble the Progressives and Bob LaFollette, a group of people that history passed by. For millions of Americans, traditional Christian values are as important as the economy, health care or the war in Iraq when it comes to choosing a president. Maybe someday one of these people can explain to me why gay marriage is wrong, you know, because it's in the Bible, but nobody stones adulterers to death anymore. Seems to me that's in the same book, too. So is the rule that you can kill your kids if they curse you. Try that as a legal defense sometime.

• The Republican tax cut mantra is a fraud and the mainstream media has totally missed the class warfare being waged by the rich against the poor.

As someone who spent 16 years in the mainstream news business, I can tell you there's nothing more difficult to get into print than the word "lie." Numbers do not lie, but their interpretations are opinions, not facts, and the ticking time bomb of the deficit just keeps growing. Ronald Reagan called a trillion dollar debt unthinkable -- and the debt is now seven times higher than "unthinkable" in less than 25 years. I'm old enough to remember when Republicans were good with money; now they want to bankrupt the government as a way to eliminate all the programs, for financial reasons, that they could never get the votes to eliminate honestly. There's no other explanation for the GOP's total capitulation on the deficit since the GOP-led government shutdown during the Clinton administration. In 10 years, the GOP mantra on the deficit has gone from it's so important we'll shut down the government before we borrow another dime, to the deficit doesn't matter because it's paid for via future growth. Makes as much sense as Vegans for America holding their 10th anniversary party at a steak house.

• Hope is not a plan.

Any president who ignores military history when going to war is likely going to lose that war. The Israelis, the Army War College -- even the French, for God's sake -- told George W. Bush that it was only a matter of time before a supposedly liberating Army would be seen as an occupying Army. Polls in Iraq show more people blame America for their problems than the insurgents. President Bush's notion that U.S. troops would be met like the liberators of Paris shows a complete lack of understanding of the facts at hand. The Iraqi middle class was pretty much wiped out by U.N. sanctions, and those people didn't blame the U.N., they blamed the U.S. for pushing the sanctions. History is going to be kind to Secretary of State Colin Powell, for his opposition to this disastrous mess, and Dubya is going to end up like Shakespeare's Henry V. Let's once and for all kill the canard that the U.S. cannot immediately withdraw from Iraq without a civil war. Memo to Washington: 90 attacks a day is a civil war. It's too late to worry about winning. The U.S. has already lost.

• The planet is an issue.

Why are human beings the only species on the planet without full employment?

Folks, the impact of man on the environment will be the issue of the 21st century. Too bad that given the current state of U.S. public affairs, politicians will get around to it in the 22nd.

-30-

At times like these, Mr. Marshall likes to quote Graham Greene. "The world is not black and white. It's grey and grey."

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