Barack Obama is not the first minority president! All presidents in recent memory have been minority presidents. Turnout has rarely exceeded 60% of the eligible voters. That means that about 40% or more of the eligible voters voted "I don't give a damn" or "none of the above".
According to the Washington Post over 131 million people voted in 2008 elections, or 61.6% of eligible voters. That means there were 213 million eligible voters. Infoplease, based on New York Times figures, says there were 231 million eligible voters. Whichever figure is used, that means 90 to 100 million eligible voters did not show up!
CNN gives the final totals as 66,883,230 for Obama and 58,343,671 for McCain. I don't know who to feel more sorry for, Obama for coming in second or McCain for coming in third. Well, Obama can take some comfort that with his 29-31% of the eligible voters he did somewhat better than Reagan did with his supposed 1980 landslide with 28% of the eligible voters. See "If you don't vote, you have only yourself to blame".
