Mr. Alter:
It is most appropriate that your Newsweek photograph is dark and sinister. The photographer is to be commended for capturing the essence of your soul. Your commentary in ???Between the Lines??? (Newsweek, November 3, 2008) is hateful, shadowy, partisan and baseless bile. In my lifetime ??? which began in 1952 ??? the average difference in popular votes cast in presidential elections is 7.3 million. It appears that President-Elect Obama will win the popular vote by 7.2 million ballots: a very typical result. Granted, each of these 15 elections focused on current crises that arose in the ebb and flow of life on this planet. But I would point out, Mr. Alter, that there are two primary parties that make up our American political system ??? Democrats and Republicans. There are two parties ??? read carefully - because they hold different views on the appropriate way to govern. They generally differ sharply on issues of economics, taxes, welfare programs, military preparedness, the size of government and social issues ??? to name a few. This has been, and presumably will always be, the case. I have no doubt that votes were cast in this election based on the color of Mr. Obama???s skin ??? both for and against. That you would attribute any ballot not cast for him a racist vote ??? as you clearly did in this ???commentary??? - is inflammatory and inexcusable. There are myriad ideological reasons that 56 million citizens voted for Senator McCain rather than President-Elect Obama. The last sentence of your article suggests that those counted in that number lack common sense and are indecent. You, Mr. Alter, are indecent.
Thomas J. Schuyler
Citizen ??? USA
Nashville, TN
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Why McCain Won
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As McCain closed the gap in the last week with his message on taxes and fear of another terrorist attack, the race came down to New Hampshire (which went for Kerry in 2004) and Colorado (which went for President Bush). Obama needed one of them to get to 270 electoral votes. New Hampshire's fabled independents had long had a soft spot for McCain in GOP primaries, and they delivered for him again. Colorado, after flirting with Obama, simply reverted to form, with Palin's frontier image helping a bit.
Obama had wired every college campus in the country, and he enjoyed great enthusiasm among politically engaged young people. But less-engaged students told reporters the day after the election that they had meant to vote for Obama but were "too busy." History held: young people once again voted in lower percentages than their elders. Waiting for them turned out to be like waiting for Godot.
The Obama margin among young voters was underestimated a little in some polls because so many 18- to 24-year-olds use only cell phones. But the deeper failure of the polling came from methodology that could not properly account for the nine in 10 voters who won't answer a polltaker's questions. With ceaseless robo-calls and as many as 15 live calls from campaigns to each household in a swing state, even fewer people than normal took time in the last two weeks to respond. Who were the voters slamming down the phone? Disproportionately for McCain. In rebuffing pollsters, they skewed the sample toward Obama, inflating his "support."
At the start of the campaign season NEWSWEEK asked, "Is America Ready" for a black president? The answer: only if Obama proved close to a flawless candidate, and even then, we won't know for sure until Election Day. That doesn't mean Obama lost because all, or even most, McCain voters allowed race to be a factor. But enough did to change the outcome.
Democrats are despairing over the results, fearing they might never view their country in the same light again. Even many Republicans are subdued at the news of McCain's victory. Having expected him to lose, they know the GOP has now completed a sorry transition from the party of Lincoln to the party of cynicism. McCain, they're reasoning, might prove a fine president, but it shouldn't have happened like this.
It probably won't. Millions of people in the rest of the world assume that Barack Obama cannot be elected because he is black. They assume that the original sin of American history—enshrined in our Constitution—cannot be transcended. I go into next week's election with a different assumption—that the common sense and decency of the American people will prove the skeptics wrong.
© 2008
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