Eugene David
...The One-Minute Pundit

Wednesday, November 05, 2008


Doubts -- from partisan Steve:

In the run-up to Tuesday, all signs pointed to a dominating showing by Obama. We heard endless talk about his voter-turnout operation and the millions of new voters who, inspired by his candidacy, would trek to the polls. Since he was already leading in most swing states, the wishful thinking of Democrats was that an undetected wave of Obama support would move create a tsunami, with every battleground state and even a few seemingly-safe Republican states breaking for him in the end.

But that’s not quite what happened. Instead, Obama held on to the states that John Kerry won in 2004, for a total of 252 electoral votes. He crossed the 270-vote threshold with relative ease by winning convincingly in the red states of Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico, bringing his electoral vote total to 271. But beyond that, his best margin in a red state came in Ohio, where he prevailed by four points. In the end, he crossed 50 percent in enough of those red states to produce a convincing Electoral College verdict; but McCain was no more than a few points in a few states away from holding Obama to the bare minimum of electoral votes.

This isn’t meant to throw cold water on the Obama celebration. But his narrow margins in most of the swing states coupled with the relatively close popular vote tally should temper the euphoria of the Democrat and his backers. Yes, they won, and they did far better than the last two Democratic nominees. But they’d be wise not to forget that, even though they had just about every built-in factor working in their favor, much of the country still refused to stand with them.

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