That election, which defined the Democratic Party that we have known for almost two centuries, has been called the first triumph of the common man in American politics. It pitted the moneyed interests of the Northeast against the farmers and working free laborers of the South and West. It was the first election in which almost all of the states (22 of 24) used direct popular election rather than state legislatures to elect the presidential electors.

 It was capped with a raucous inaugural celebration during which "rustic" common people shocked Washington society as they wandered through the White House celebrating, drinking and shaking President Andy Jackson's hand. And so started a bond between the Democratic Party and the typical working American that lasted 176 years -- until last Tuesday.

 It's not that the Democrats lost an election; obviously both parties have lost numerous elections. But never before in my memory -- which goes back faintly to 1956 -- has either party in its loss reacted with such venomous contempt for the American people.

 When we conservatives got shellacked in 1964 -- with Goldwater losing 61 percent-39 percent to Lyndon Johnson -- we knew we had a lot of work ahead if we were going to educate the public to our views. But I can honestly say that although I remember thinking that the public was misguided in its judgment, I never hated or felt contemptuous of the majority electorate -- of my fellow countrymen.

 This dominant sentiment of the Democratic Party elite -- that scores of millions of Americans are categorically unacceptable as fellow countrymen -- is evidence of a cancer in the soul of that party. These Democrats, quite expressly, are asserting that "christers," people who believe in the teachings of Jesus as described in the inerrant words of the Bible, are un-American, almost subhuman. Some of these Democrats would rather secede than stay in the same country with such people. If they were in the majority with no need to secede, what would they do? Their bigoted and absolutist view of religious people is at least a second cousin to the Nazi view of the Jews.

 In Europe, the few remaining people of faith have recently taken to calling the increasingly more adamant European secularist majority "secular fundamentalists." While that phrase is unfair to the perfectly respectable fundamentalist religious sentiment -- it shows how much more harsh and filled with fear the religious/secular divide is becoming.

 Fortunately, most rank-and-file Democrats are not infected with such secular bigotry. Democrats don't need to secede. They just need to purge their party of such of their leaders and intellectual vanguard as spew forth such rubbish.