The predictable finger-pointing is well under way: How could the Democrats have blown it again?

Competing against an unpopular president who is mired in an increasingly polarizing war and shepherding an economy that’s going nowhere fast, John Kerry had this election for the taking.

That he didn’t take it and it now appears the margin wasn’t all that close speaks to his all-too-obvious flaws as a candidate and to the Democratic Party’s inability to marshal a disciplined campaign machine that can deliver a focused message. A message that doesn’t pretend to be all things to all voters.

But there’s something else something the Democrats have been saddled with for almost 10 years, whether or not they want to admit it.

It was to become the clarion call for religious conservatives and the lightning rod for right-wing talk shows and Internet sites. It was the indirect springboard for a little-considered Texas governor who tapped into what’s become known as the nation’s moral values.

It was Monica. That woman.

Just consider, beyond all the issues, policies and politics, how different the nation would be today had Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton not hooked up. If only one of them had stopped to consider the consequences of their actions the immorality of it, first and foremost, but also the potential fallout and concluded, “Let’s stop, we can’t do this.”

For openers, Bill Clinton would not have been impeached. There would have been no Starr report and lacking that outrageous legal lynching, the president’s conservative opponents would not have had the fuel to stoke their cause. In fact, with the nation in the midst of a spectacular economic boom in the late 1990s, scholars would begin looking at Clinton as among the century’s exceptional leaders.

All of which would have provided an enormous advantage for heir apparent Al Gore. You could just see Clinton, the best campaigner of his generation, being at Gore’s side in the closing weeks of the race (instead of being pushed aside for much of the campaign for fear that the Lewinsky scandal would be a turnoff to voters). Given how tight the race turned out to be, it’s hard to imagine how an untainted Clinton would not have provided Gore with the decisive edge.

And with President Gore in the White House? Well, there’s the obvious: the United States would not have invaded Iraq, at a cost of over 1,000 soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis.

The Justice Department would not have responded to the 9/11 attacks by secretly implementing policies that allow anyone suspected of terrorist activities to be jailed indefinitely and without due process.

The economic downturn would not have led President Gore to slash taxes on billionaires and help turn a massive budget surplus into a massive budget deficit.

And all things being equal, the 2004 election would have provided Gore with a relatively clear path to a second term, with George W. Bush relegated to a U.S. Senate seat or perhaps chief executive of the NASCAR circuit.

Life and history are filled with moments that, on reflection, take on a weight that can never be realized at the time they’re being played out (it works the other way too). Just remember that a decade or so ago this nation’s politics was dominated by a middle-of-the-road sensibility made up of fiscal conservatism and social moderation. Everyone wanted to be a centrist.

Now, all bets are off. Everywhere we turn “moral values” have become the guiding light even though the hypocrisy behind such rhetoric is stultifying and more than a bit terrifying. But the cold, hard truth is that it all started when a White House intern and the President of the United States stupidly and selfishly had an affair an affair still being remembered in so many dispiriting ways.

**Mark Lacter is editor of the Business Journal.