Post-Election Numbers

In Today’s Washington Post, author Scott Turow has a piece about the numbers that let to Bush’s election victory last month that is worth a read:

A Dominant GOP? How So?
The Washington Post, 12/26/2004

In the article, Turow points out that Bush’s popular-vote margin over Kerry is the lowest ever recorded by an incumbent president – just under 2.5%, and on this point he writes:

This shouldn’t underrate Bush’s achievements. He improved on his 2000 performance, winning a slight majority this year – a little less than 51 percent. And it is probably a tribute to his political skills that he won at all because sitting presidents tend to win decisively, or lose. But by the yard stick of history, the Bush victory cannot be taken as a resounding chorus of support from the American people asking for more of the same.

If Bush won (and in America today you don’t have to be a raving nutjob to accept the fact that THIS President would go to any lengths to win legitimately or not), then Democrats will have to accept that. What we must not accept is the Republican attempt to spin this razor-thin victory into some a mandate by a predominantly Red America that just plain doesn’t exist.