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As governor of Vermont, Dean promoted homosexual civil unions. His presidential campaign stumbled over clumsy attempts to display biblical literacy and religious values. At one point the governor was quoted as declaring that the Book of Job is his favorite New Testament book.

The eventual Democratic nominee for President, John Kerry, professed himself uneasy about talking of his Catholic faith, and his pro-abortion-rights views generated a lot of criticism from his church leaders.

Dean's response
Early analyses of exit polls of the 2004 presidential election indicated that the largest block of voters that made a difference in the election were the "moral values voters." Although some later analyses have disputed that claim, Democratic consultants who briefed the DNC groups just before each appearance by Dean said they accepted the conclusion that the election was decided by perceptions of voters that the Democrats were indifferent, at best, to religion and moral values. Pollster Celinda Lake told the women Democratic leaders that "the most powerful predictor of the 2004 vote was religion. The religious 'others' and the nonreligious voted for us. The worst voters were against us." Catching her misstatement, Lake said she meant that the voters among whom the Democrats had the worst support were the evangelicals and Catholics.

Immediately after Lake's presentation, Dean launched a volley of well-prepared pro-religion, pro-moral-values remarks. This time there were no biblical misquotes.

Dean told the women not to say that the Democrats are pro-abortion. "We are not pro-abortion!" was his lead off sentence. "There is not anyone I know who is pro-abortion." The former governor attacked the Bush administration for there being more abortions per capita than there were under President Bill Clinton. Dean embraced Clinton's goal to make abortion rare while allowing women the right to choose. The incoming leader of the Democrats also recalled how an evangelical supporter from Texas had told him that her compassion encompassed more issues than just abortion.

Dean asked the Democratic women to figure out how to reach women who feel alienated from the Democratic Party. Pollster Lake pointed out that in the presidential election the Democrats suffered a big drop in the women's vote. Noting that her party lagged 15 percentage points behind the GOP among married women and 10 to 11 points among white women, Lake said that unless these gaps are closed that the Democrats can't win.

Dean seemed to be trying to leave the impression that the Democratic women need to reach out to pro-life women. "There are a lot of women's groups," Dean observed. "We need to figure out how they can all get together."

Dean mocked the Republicans as family values hypocrites. "The GOP wants to cut the money for feeding kids. They only get two of the values of the New Testament. Do they talk about having walked among the least of these?"

Comparing the Republicans to Sadducees and Pharisees, Dean said, "I haven't heard the Republicans talk about that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man through the gates of heaven."

A problem of finding the right language?
Dean said that Democrats have failed to use language that common Americans could relate to. "We need to get away from slogans and ideology," he said. "We learned in the last election that language makes an enormous difference."

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February (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49