{"id":3276,"date":"2010-11-04T02:16:14","date_gmt":"2010-11-04T09:16:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3276"},"modified":"2010-11-04T02:16:14","modified_gmt":"2010-11-04T09:16:14","slug":"editorial-americas-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/11\/04\/editorial-americas-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial: America’s Shame"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"4shame\"The elections yesterday were not decided by the people who voted.  There were many factors.  The Republicans out-politicked the Democrats, because the American people seemed unaware that, albeit with far too much caving in along the way, Obama and the Democrats did more for Main Street than in any session of Congress since the LBJ administration.  Republicans were able to focus on every race, because of the record spending on lying ads, secretly funded by criminal corporations.  But the election was decided by the landslide majority of Americans who chose not to vote.  Twenty eight nations regularly have voter turnout over 75%<\/a>. But according to US Election Project<\/a>, only 38.2% of the 218,054,301 eligible voters went to the polls and voted.  These range from 51.5% in Oregon to 27.3% in Texas.  By comparison, the turnout was 41.3% in 2006.  The modern record high was 62.2% in 2008.  Also key is which 38.2% voted.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\u2026In other words, last night’s results were as much about who voted as what they voted for. Those who voted were older, whiter, and more pessimistic and frightened<\/strong>. Those who stayed home were the people much more likely to favor an optimistic agenda based on hope and activism<\/strong>. Now, of course, turnout is closely related to intensity of feelings, so clearly the matter of who voted says something about public attitudes in general. But, on the whole, it would be wrong to c nclude from last night’s results that all those people who turned out for Obama in 2008 have now changed stripes\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NC Policy Watch<\/a>><\/p>\n

The young people who did vote were great. <\/font><\/p>\n

\n

National exit polls of more than 17,000 voters show a remarkable trend: Adults age 18-29 voted against the Republican Tsunami by 16 points (56-40). Younger adults age 18-24 were even more progressive, voting against Republicans by 19 points (58-39)\u2026 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Alternet<\/a>><\/p>\n

The problem was that there were not enough of them. Only 11 percent of those under 30 turned out, below the 18 percent of the 2008 election and the 13 percent who turned out in 2006<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n

Pundits are talking about what America wants based on the exit surveys of voters.  They are talking to the wrong people.  They should be talking to the people who didn\u2019t vote.<\/font><\/p>\n

Based on the data above 83,296,743 voted.  Assuming a generous 5% average margin of victory, the difference was 4,164,837.  That\u2019s 1.9% of Americans who decided this election. That\u2019s right. 134,757,556 Americans allowed 1.9% of their peers, mostly old, scared, and uninformed to make their decision for them.  That is a national shame of epic proportions.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The elections yesterday were not decided by the people who voted.  There were many factors.  The Republicans out-politicked the Democrats, because the American people seemed unaware that, albeit with far too much caving in along the way, Obama and the Democrats did more for Main Street than in any session of Congress since the LBJ […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-politics","category-19-id","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}