When I left for Oregon and Washington, I was all psyched to send you all a “Dispatches From a Battleground State” kind of column…especially a survey of the televised political ads, since we’ve had almost none here in the Baltimore-DC metro area. But I didn’t watch TV the entire time I was there, except to watch the Sox beat the Yankees.

Since I got back, I was still planning to write about Portland and Seattle, and about the great people out there, and the lovely time I had. I was going to write about staying with a good friend at the house of her sister and sister-in-law—one of the lucky lesbian families to get married while it was legal—and looking at their wedding photos. I was going to write about the Michael Moore rally I attended, and all the Kerry signs I saw, and how energizing it all was

Obviously, it seems a bit moot now. But even at the time I had a dark feeling it was moot then (which may have been a part of what kept me from writing…).

Because the moment I left the city…the moment I ventured into the surrounding state, as I did on the way to see Moore…the Bush signs starting cropping up. And cropping up. And cropping up.

There are a lot of states out there. A lot of space. A lot of people. And they’re scared. And they don’t like change. They don’t want to think hard about politics…about America’s place in the world...about progressive social issues. They don’t want to care as expansively about people who aren’t like them, who they don’t understand, who they’ll never meet. They just want to live their lives, and feed their families, and do OK.

And Bush offers them that narrative. Bush make them feel safe, and OK, and proud to be American. When America is attacked, Bush makes sure we attack somebody—anybody—back. When they don’t have enough money in their wallets, Bush says he’ll cut taxes, and no one likes taxes, so they nod, because it sounds reasonable. When their own family lives are chaotic, Bush shields them from gay marriage and abortion, which make the notion of family even more chaotic, and he invokes God and Christianity to boot. Bush is like them…or more accurately, projects an image of being like them…and they welcome that. (And we can’t complain, because that same impulse helped Clinton beat the first Bush.)

Rural and Southern America will let itself be lied to, let itself be worked over, let itself be bled dry, because the GOP tells them what they want to hear and makes them feel safe. It’s why people buy SUVs—not because they are safer (by any statistic they’re clearly not), but because they feel safer. It’s why a battered woman defends her husband’s actions and goes back again and again—because he says he loves her, and because facing forward and facing the unknown is far more terrifying than the familiar and muted terror at home. Bush’s America, for better or for worse, is one they understand…no matter what bruises his party leaves on it.

I saw it in Oregon. I saw it in Washington. I see it whenever I talk to my relatives in rural Illinois. They don’t love Bush. But they’re afraid of cities…afraid of Washington…and afraid of being left behind. So they vote the way they do.

And I can’t blame them. They’re honestly doing what they think is right for themselves and their loved ones. Which, sadly, is bad news for us queer-friendly, baby-killing bleeding hearts.

But I have good news.

As Edward says, Kerry hasn’t lost yet. And Bush hasn’t won. We take this fight one day and one ballot as a time.

And even if we lose, the future course is clear. The Republicans have no excuses now. They’ve got big enough majorities now that it’s up to them to run the country. If Kerry loses, and with Daschle gone, they’re in charge.

And they will blow it.

And the moment they falter…the moment they stumble…we have to act.

Our job for the next two years, and then the two after that, is to get people behind the Democratic Party. Our job is to take back and reclaim, recast, or replace the term “liberal.” Our job is to point at the Republicans in control of…well, everything…and say if this doesn’t feel right, if you’re not happy, if you’re still no better off…you know who to blame…and you know who to stand with.

Off-year elections tend to go to the opposition. We have a community we need to find a way to speak to. It’s time to start getting ready.