1865 REDUX or THE NEW CIVIL WAR

Their candidate enforced a rule at his convention that no one be allowed to attack Bush—perhaps the worst president since Ulysses Grant—and they are surprised they lost.

Their patrician, wind-surfing candidate seemed more tongue-tied than the bumbling man he opposed whenever he tried to articulate a position on Iraq and the phony war on terrorism. Kerry, a man who made Al Gore look loosey-goosey, made it clear: He voted for the war before he stood against it. Clear? Did he forget about the part where Bush lied to Americans and manufactured fake intelligence to justify the war? He did, pretty much. Did you believe him when he said over and over that he would find the terrorists and "kill them"? I didn't—and neither did millions of voters.

When Kerry was lambasted by Bush, Cheney and Co. as a weak-kneed, cheese-eating liberal "from Massachusetts," when he was portrayed virtually as a traitor for opposing the Vietnam war, when he was ridiculed for speaking French, did he fight back? The thing about the Republicans is that they realize that a Culture War is a war, and they know how to fight it. The Democrats don't. Why didn't Kerry respond to Bush's repeated comments like, "What can you expect from a senator from Massachusetts?" with attacks of his own: "What can you expect from a failed governor from Texas, an abortion-banning, science-hating, evolution-disparaging, jingoistic, non-foreign-traveling, semi-literate book-hating, nothing-knowing, assault-weapon-loving, billionaire-supporting, Enron-snuggling, nation-bankrupting, Social Security-dismantling, Medicare-mangling man who who forgot to read the memo saying that Osama bin Laden was planning to attack us?"

Now Kerry wants bipartisanship with this man? Now Kerry and his goofily boyish sidekick Edwards want Bush to "unite" us.

It's war. And we have to win it. The very map of the United States looks like the Civil War. We need to obliterate the South again, just like we did in 1865. And then we need Reconstruction, starting with teaching them to read a book once a year. We need to crush the south and the mountain states with a Culture War offensive and then pour salt in their fields, give them the Carthage treatment they deserve, and worse. Al From and the DLC are going to want to placate the South yet again. Democrats are going to call for a "rural strategy." I say: We need to unleash our cities in an all-out assault against "rural idiocy." We need to win the suburbs, by scaring the middle-of-the-road homeowners with the prospect of back alley abortions and no more Social Security. We need to use our real army: blacks, Latins, union workers, women, teachers, academia, and the Big Media—we do control it—to obliterate the enemy. This is war.

And we can't do it by nominating billionaires anymore. We need to find plain-spoken candidates with working-class backgrounds to represent us. And then we need to go war. Forget about winning the war in Iraq (incredibly, Kerry actually said that in his concession speech). We need to win the war at home.