Gail Collins wrote "Believing in Barack", for the 2010-11-12 New York Times. She laments that Obama has not come through on many tasks. In it she makes the statement, "The people of America made it clear in the election that they want something done about the deficit." I sent her the following email:
Thanks for an interesting column on your ambivalence about Barack Obama. Much of what you wrote has some basis in what's happened.
However, you fell into the "media-bias" trap of over-generalization with "The people of America made it clear in the election that they want something done about the deficit."
The people of America made nothing clear. 34 million voted for Republican Senate candidates, 31 million voted for Democratic Senate candidates, and far too many stayed home. If we project an estimated turnout of 40.3% to a count of total eligible voters (165 million), we then have the Republicans coming in a distant second to "None of the above", cast de facto by 96 million eligible voters. Unfortunately, too few people actually show up to cast blank ballots, and so they are not counted.
BTW, the Republicans 34 million votes were not even a majority of the votes cast for Senate.
I do wish those who have a bigger platform than my little blog would point out more often just how many eligible voters don't show up and just how hollow claims of electoral victories are.
References:
United States Election Project, George Mason University, http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2010G.html
United States Senate Elections, 2010, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2010
End of email to Gail Collins
