Good advice for Democrats..if they'll listen

Glenn Reynolds has some wisdom for the Democrats following their defeat this week...if they'll accept it:

If you think that much of America is like a foreign country, you're not likely to win many elections -- because it's hard to get foreigners to vote for you. Calling the voters dumb probably doesn't do much to win people over, either. It always strikes me that so many people who are quick to note the importance of understanding the differences in perception between nations, or races, or sexual preferences, and to try to bridge those gaps, are so unwilling to do the same thing where people from elsewhere in their own country are concerned. But Democrats must do better, or become a regional party. Because contempt doesn't win a lot of votes.

I'll have to agree with Glenn on this point. Today, I had lunch with a group of legal aid attorneys who are trying to get more of those in their profession to donate more time to giving the poor pro bono legal help. The head of the local Legal Aid office also did a ton of MoveOn work as well. (I bit my tongue and kept my leanings to myself, as a good journalist should.) Of course, the topic of the election came up and I pointed out the map that's further down on the page that shows where the red and blue votes were concentrated. When I said that the Kerry votes were centered around the areas of the west and east coast, plus other regions, one black lawyer practically spat out her hatred and contempt for those who voted for Bush, calling them uneducated, religious crazies...among other things. "You see, the intellectuals, the educated in the cities and the universities all voted for Kerry, while out here in the boonies..."

In fact, her comments and others I have heard along these lines since Tuesday sounded a lot like this fellow:

"Take the issue of elections, for instance. What do you think of a voting system like the American one that gives a physician, an intellectual, an astronaut, an intelligent person and the head of the family, a vote that has the same weight as the vote of an ignorant, a fool, an idiot, an imbecile, a hippy, a bum, an unemployed man, who has no diploma, culture, or brains. What is this?!"

Ladies and gentlemen, the wisdom of Saudi cleric Saleh Al-Munajid.