I’ve been doing a lot of, as the cliche goes, naval-gazing in a post-Election Day daze. I’ve been thinking over and thinking over the exit poll data indicating the importance of “moral values.”

That focus, coupled with the stereotype of progressive liberals, such as I am, makes it hard for me to comprehend how divided we are as a country. In truth, after thinking about it, I think it is not so much that we are that different. “They,” the people who did not vote with me, are not prima facie stupid, uninformed, rubes, unable to discern obvious truths. (OK, maybe some of them are.) We all just want to get through our individual days and feel good about the people closest to us and our lives.

I don’t myself understand how, but I think Bush & Co. just sold their message of “morality” so hard and strong and with an air of such supreme confidence and rightness that they convinced people literally and figuratively that theirs is the side of light, truth, morality, values and God. The GOP has developed a PR arm worthy of the tobacco industry in the 1940s.

I can almost understand voting for GW if you believe in his evangelical agenda. If I were born again, it would be appealing, just as I know that many people voted for JFK because of his Roman Catholicism. But, I have a lot of trouble understanding how you could view GW as a true-believer when his main advisors, especially the likes of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, show absolutely no evidence of godliness in their ways or thoughts. They are cynical, political, powerful men, as driven by venal, earthbound urges as even the most unrepentent sinner.

While they have been hard-selling their moral superiority, we, the left, have become our own worst enemies and given them ground to expose our “sinning” ways.

The hard part for me personally is that I consider myself a moral, ethical person. I was brought up by one of the most scrupulously honest people I have ever met. (By that I mean honest to the point of getting home from the store, realizing that you got too much change and driving back to the store to return it honest. Yup, getting in the car to give back a dollar, Pat would have done that.) She was also an unbelievably compassionate (in a fucked up, bitterly sarcastic manner, but no less compassionate) woman, who would quite literally give you the coat off her back.

And, as a kid, I was part of a religious group that really seemed to embody what was being sermonized each week. To this day, I have a profound imprint of Mr. Boyce. He taught CCD classes, and each week he appealed for donations to, I think, help children in Appalachia or maybe the inner cities. In a time when more formal church appeals went overseas to help “starving children” in Africa or Asia or missionary work, our community raised money for domestic causes, because it was important that we face our own troubles at home.

Every week, when it was time to offer call and response prayers freestyle, Mr. Boyce always had something or someone to pray for in the community or in the wider world. To my childish ears, it was always very sincere and not just public speaking showboating. Most of all, I remember Mr. Boyce during the “sign of peace.” His right hand was missing fingers, but when he shook your hand and wished you peace that was a mighty firm handshake, and it really felt that, by god, he wished you peace and all spiritual gifts out there in the world.

In this group and in all of my childhood, families were central. Family values, honoring the folks before you, turning to and supporting the people around you, helping when you can and being helped when in need, births, marriages, baptisms, deaths, and an abiding idea that there are people in your life that are not transitory but are integral and solid, all of these concepts have influenced my morality and, I think, are quite mundane when compared with the “moral values” being discussed in today’s news.

If the above is true, and in fact, we all share some very basic beliefs (leaving god aside), how is it that the Democrats cannot seem to find a way into the conversation and bring that other half of the country a long?