Anti-rationalism is the basic problem the left has to deal with, and to do that the left must stop sucking up to the religious worldview and actively seek to demonize religion as a social force. The left should purge itself of any and all religious affiliations and rebuild itself entirely as a secular movement.
NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recommends the exact opposite, btw. He wrote a postmortem last night that was particular interesting because it was posted to the Times website way before Kerry was obviously dead. Kristof says that Democrats should reestablish their ties with the people by making *even more* concessions to the forces of darkness than they have already, e.g.: "To appeal to middle America, Democratic leaders don't need to carry guns to church services and shoot grizzlies on the way. But a starting point would be to shed their inhibitions about talking about faith, and to work more with religious groups." <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/opinion/03kris.html?hp>
That's completely wrong. Let's face facts: Religious people are morons who believe in magic solutions to real problems; their judgment is, ipso facto, unsound. They don't believe in normal rules of evidence and will, e.g., eagerly go to war for fictional reasons or spurn government aid for themselves in favor of the power of prayer. These people are of no use whatsoever to the left, and I say the hell with them all.
Give me a secular U.S. left, or give me a plane ticket to Canada!
Carl