We're now four days out. I'm watching last night's Real Time With Bill Maher, in which Bill is duking it out with Andrew Sullivan over the "moral values" canard. This is just the latest piece of punditry in which people are coming to radical conclusions about what this exit poll means (the show opened with a similar but, frankly, insane exchange with former Senator Alan Simpson).

Here's the thing. Twenty-two percent of respondents picked "moral values" from a list of seven choices for the most important issue (the other choices were "taxes," "education," "health care," "terrorism," "iraq" and "economy/jobs"). They did not give pollsters descriptions of what moral values they were concerned with -- whenever you hear someone saying that these were simply anti-gay voters, that's an unfounded extrapolation. All they did was check a box that said "moral values." All the other stuff is fake meaning inserted by fake "experts." This "moral values" trope has allowed the entire pundit class to unleash a torrent of unfounded claims that they've just been waiting for an excuse to bring out.

[UPDATE: Wow, the original wacko asshole Andrew Sullivan is back. What a complete knob.]