"All right," John Dos Passos wrote in a rage over the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, "we are two nations." Oh, are we ever. And 77 years after Dos Passos penned those words, his two nations and ours bear an almost spooky resemblance. The most striking, the most overwhelming fact about the 2004 vote is how closely it resembles the 2000 vote. Think of it: Since November 2000, the twin towers have been obliterated, we've gone to war preemptively and under erroneous pretenses in Iraq, George W. Bush has become the first president since Herbert Hoover to have jobs shrink on his watch, our standing in the world has diminished nearly everywhere. And how did all this affect the electoral map? A shift of 17,000 votes turned New Hampshire (four electoral votes) from red to blue, while a shift of 12,000 votes turned New Mexico (five electoral votes) from blue to red. The battle lines of the cultural civil war that emerged in the 2000 contest have shown themselves to be all but impermeable to...