Editor's note. There was an incorrect address in the first paragraph of yesterday's edition. My apologies for the error. When the correct address is available, I will promptly pass it along.

Please read Part Two as well. Babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are in more danger than ever. Your comments at daveandrusko@gmail.com are appreciated.

For a whole host of reasons, we are still in the preliminary stage of decoding what "exit polls" from the 2008 election supposedly tell/will tell us. Yesterday at USA Today's "Faith and Reason," managed by Cathy Lynn Grossman, you can find an interesting take on "Religion and the 2008 election: Surprising finds." [http://content.usatoday.com/communities/religion/post/2008/12/59603038/1]

Let me offer the two lead paragraphs:

The exit polls aren't released yet but early studies by political scientist John Green and democratic pollster Anna Greenberg, find the race and religiosity -- whether one attends weekly worship -- are just as polarizing as they were in 2004.

"It's a new version of an old story" said Green, a senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which sponsored the seminar today in Key West.

I have no idea if the first sentence of the next paragraph is true, but here it is.

The differences that added up to a Barack Obama win, not a John Kerry loss, were a movement to the democratic column by greater numbers of Hispanic Catholics, other minority Catholics and Protestants such as Asians, and less-observant (attending church less than weekly, if ever) white Catholics. Obama made no inroads among observant white evangelicals.

What makes this nearly-first draft of political history interesting for us is two-fold.

First, within "virtually every group," a majority says "they think the newly elected president will be successful in his first term, a significantly higher number than those who said the same for Bush in 2004."

There is a welter of important reasons why Barack Obama is the first African-American President that we needn't go into here. But it only makes sense that people will want to believe he will have a successful first term for many of the same reasons they voted for a man about whom they knew virtually nothing. In both instances it represents the triumph of hope over inexperience.

But then there is the second nugget from this column. The under-30 set, while "more progressive" on other social issues, was not on abortion, according to Democratic pollster Greenberg. "And because young adults are statistically also less likely to attend church weekly," adds Grossman, "their roll-out for Obama may have been a significant factor in his boost in votes among non-observant white evangelicals."

This is very important. Younger voters, religious or otherwise, are increasingly pro-life. Among young white Evangelicals, many polls have revealed that they are even more pro-life than their parents.

Grossman suggests there are "other open questions that only more polls, more elections, may answer." They include,

• "Will younger voters, including young evangelicals, who tiptoed into the Democratic column for the first time, stay there or is it just a matter of the Obama effect?

• "What may happen once Obama takes actions that relate to abortion such as appointing pro-choice judges?" [And, of course, Obama will be undertaking many, many pro-abortion initiatives besides nominating pro-abortion judges and justices.]

For many voters, Obama was like mood music. Nobody was listening much to the lyrics and when they did, they found bland, warm-and- fuzzy assurances.

What happens when quasi-rock star Barack Obama steps forth on a new stage--the Presidency--and all those words of hope and reconciliation and "common ground" are revealed for what they are: dust in the wind? Of course, these revelations will not happen on their own.

Obama's actions will be swathed in disguises, some old, some new. And the ever-supplicant media will not be eager to wipe away the make-up or take a peak to see what lies underneath the rhetorical mask Obama will don.

No, the responsibility to tell the American people the truth rests on us. That's why TN&V exists. That's why National Right to Life News matters.

I can only ask you to please forward TN&V to your pro-life friends and encourage them to subscribe on their own (it's free, of course). And as Christmas draws near, a gift subscription to NRL News, the "pro-life newspaper of record," would be a terrific gesture. (See http://nrlc.org/news/GiftSubscribe.html.)

If you can, please read Part Two. Babies prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome are in more danger than ever.