"It's the metaphysics, stupid."

Read the following from the Second Presidential debate

GIBSON: Senator Kerry, the next question is for you, and it comes from Elizabeth Long.

LONG: Senator Kerry, thousands of people have already been cured or treated by the use of adult stem cells or umbilical cord stem cells. However, no one has been cured by using embryonic stem cells. Wouldn't it be wise to use stem cells obtained without the destruction of an embryo?

KERRY: You know, Elizabeth, I really respect your -- the feeling that's in your question. I understand it. I know the morality that's prompting that question, and I respect it enormously.

But like Nancy Reagan, and so many other people -- you know, I was at a forum with Michael J. Fox the other day in New Hampshire, who's suffering from Parkinson's, and he wants us to do stem cell, embryonic stem cell...

Next:

DEGENHART: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?

KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, leads me today.

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise.

That's why I think it's important. That's why I think it's important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning.

You'll help prevent AIDS.

You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.

You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it.

GIBSON: Mr. President, minute and a half.

BUSH: I'm trying to decipher that.

My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion.

That's your election, right there. Those two answers symbolize all that's wrong with how the Democratic Party regards itself . And how, seemingly irrationally and despite conditions here and overseas, Americans will continue to disregard the Democratic Party until it get's it's s*** in one bag and understands one thing: Simplicity, in the form of fundamental clarity, is what wins friends, consumers and votes.

To many, Kerry's above answers equal a confusing dystopia and a future that doesn't need us. (Hell, put that way, it scares the crap out of me, too.)

Given the reality of a complex world growing only moreso, the only way you communicate your fundamental clarity--your humanity, your trustworthiness--is through the one benchmark that doesn't change readily: A common sense of moral understanding, a simple framework.

Democrats refuse to take that step. And they keep finding themselves on the floor, ears ringing, relatively friendless, shouting "But.. But... But the facts are on our side!"

Maybe this is rock bottom. Maybe.

More on the problem, and the solution, here

The question voters want answered is "Who are you, and why should I care?" But if you have only words to answer this question, you are doomed. The voters' internal, subliminal dialogue goes: Spare me the shopping list. Don't tell me, show me. Don't bury me in position papers, touch me. Mirror me, even if I don't recognize myself. That last one is key. Politicians are purveyors of hope and answers to questions voters are often unequipped to ask. Visionary politics is about a future people didn't know they had...

The only way Democrats will ever get out of the whirlpool of retailing issues, of being discount players rather than branded, value-added equities is to swallow hard and embrace the concept of "meaning". And to decide. Not whether they are nurturers or strict disciplinarians, or whether they are Artists or Caretakers, Rebels or Heroes, but "who am I?" In people, and character language ....In people terms, party defined as an individual in the minds of voters: a coherent, relevant and resonant public character.

Republicans will nominate the occasional bonehead and, much like a busted clock is right twice a day, they will bungle an election to Democrats. But winning by forfeit is hardly a plan, is it? Democrats, in order to win in a replicable mandate-inducing way, will have to embrace the truth that people take their measure of individuals and institutions by the feel of their experience, not by the brochure copy. They judge by symbolism, by virtue, by a moral sliderule. Some may not think these "private" and deeply personal benchmarks have a place in public discourse. Sorry, they're wrong. Politics is sublimely personal. Identity and self-image is key. Being "in" is primal. Being "out" for so many years drove Republicans crazy, and to rock bottom. At that point, with nothing left to lose, they followed Sun Tzu's dictum. Retreat, reevaluate, realign, reassert. They discovered that, for those who vote, you are your vote. It says things about you to yourself. And if nothing else, you want to like yourself. These all factor into an equation that shoots out the other end an archetype whose dimension fits the burning desire of voters. Or not....

here

Rightness is meaning. And meaning needs context. The common benchmarks with which we measure meaning are intrinsic values like justice, fortitude, charity, truth, beauty, ambition, merit, and yes, faith. They don't need explanation. They are, as Kant and others note, Intrinsic Goods, "good in themselves." Go here to see exactly how pervasive and understandable this framework is.

Done? That, in a nutshell, is the cultural lexicon of persuasion, passion and purpose. Now, imagine that matrix as a filter against the messages you hear from politicians or advertisers. How do they measure up? Some people see that Table of Elements and intuitively glom onto it. They see the fit and context of their worldview and begin moving pieces around; they begin measuring their business, ideology or relationships against it. That's good. It's not perfect, nor does it delinate every factor or eventuality. Nor does it need to. The point is not to give the answers, but to provide a common credible language with which to build and frame your views--and your solutions--in authentic, straightforward and deeply human terms. In this way, ideas begin to matter because they factor in a thing beyond expediency. That thing is peoples' idealized view of their self--what they could be. Remember the lines, "Politicians are purveyors of hope and answers to questions voters are often unequipped to ask"? Finally, they say, someone is making an attempt to frame what matters to me in a way I and others can comprehend and begin to talk about. Talking. About common ground--fears and ideals, successes and disappointments. That feels like progress to people who are told we live in an Age of Progress, yet see no meaningful, personal signs of it in the markers of that Age: Email, cell phones, pizza delivery, sock puppets--all, if you'll notice, rpresentative of our ability to be further away from each other and yet, still able to "touch base." It seems that culturally, contact replaces connection, availability trumps proximity. Yet our urge for connection and proximity remains firmly parked in the the, reptilian R-Complex of Paul MacLeary's Triune Brain. "Touch," figuratively and literally, is the key to "rightness."

And here

...we are collections of hopes and fears. We promote hope, exalt it and imbue it in our organizations, products and messages. Or, we wallow in fear and frustration, mostly by pretending to ignore their real impact. Either way, these feelings tend to attract like minds--you get what you measure for, goes the saying. Proximity of these minds builds bonds. The collection of these bonds form communities. Another term for community could be neighborhood, or brand, or company, or political party. Whatever you call them, they are affinity groups with an aggregate collection of ideals that reveal themselves as archetypes. You might call these metaphorical definitions. They are more powerful than organizations themselves....