Sure, 20% of voters said that the most important thing to them re: the vote was "moral issues." Meaning that they were against gay marriage and abortion, and therefore voted for Bush. But that's only 20%.

(In an aside: Christians voting on moral issues make no sense. If you really adhere to Christianity, you should be worried about saving people's souls, not legislating the way in which they live in sin. If we're all going to hell, what does it matter whether we're gay or murderers or covetous of our neighbors wives and oxen?

How did Jesus save people's souls? By feeding them, healing them, and praying for them. He even stopped a prostitute from being stoned. What did he think about people who tried to legislate other people's sin? They were known as Pharisees. And he had nothing but wrath for most of them.)

Who were the other people voting for Bush? Rich white men. Voting for their pocketbooks. Halliburton exec-types who benefit directly from the Bush admin's policy.

Who else? People full of fear. People who were shaken to the core by 9-11, who are angry and afraid to "change canoes midstream" or whatever. That inexplicable mass of humans who always vote for the incumbent, because at least he is a known quantity.

Yes, our country is deeply divided. But that's because Bush is a divisive person, his administration deliberately misleading the public, creating issues to distract from our biggest problems (Osama and al-qaida) and proposing and implementing radical policies that disenfranchise most of the population.

If everyone really understood that there were no WMD, that Saddam wasn't chillin with Osama on some Baghdad golf course, that tax cuts have a direct impact on their schools, their kids, their neighborhoods and their futures, that Bush's environmental policies are probably leading to higher cancer rates even as we speak, I think we would see a much more united America.

Many of my friends are starting to get together to strategize now on how to get that message out. How to win back the White House and the rest of it. If the Republicans could pull themselves together in 40 years to implement radical changes, so can we.

Grief-stricken, exhausted, my reaction is to retreat. To go get dinner and show and change the channel when the talking monkey president comes on. But we can't do that; we have stay engaged and learn to fight harder, smarter and deliver the occasional low blow.

The fight has just begun.