In the Sun-Gazette's Thursday editorial entitled "By a razor's edge, country's way of life has changed", you referred at various times to President Obama's election as "by the slimmest of margins", a "razor-thin margin of victory", "by a thread", and by "a skin-tight majority". Looking at the history of presidential election results, I cannot understand how you could term his election as anything other than "decisive".
In reviewing presidential elections from 1960 through the present, in the 2012 election President Obama received more electoral votes than the winner in the following elections: 1960 (Kennedy, 303 electoral votes), 1968 (Nixon, 301 electoral votes), 1976 (Carter, 297 electoral votes), 2000 (Bush, 271 electoral votes), and 2004 (Bush, 286).
Therefore, you must have been referring to the popular vote. President Obama received votes from 50 percent of the electorate, approximately 3 million more than Gov. Romney who received 48 percent of the votes. Again, history is instructive. This margin of victory, whether considering percentages or differences in the votes, is greater than the margin of victory of the winner in each of those elections referred to above. As examples, in 1960, President Kennedy won the popular vote by only 119,000. And how can we forget the election of 2000, when George W. Bush received fewer votes than Al Gore. Even the Republican favorite, Ronald Reagan, received only 51 percent of the votes cast in 1980.
Considering the conservative slant of the Sun Gazette's editorial page, I can understand your disappointment in President Obama's re-election. But don't mischaracterize his clearcut victory. Both candidates repeatedly emphasized that this election was a choice between two different philosophies of governing. The electorate, by a margin greater than the margin in most of the presidential elections since 1960, chose President Obama's vision. It's time to move forward--and let's pray that the radical right wing legislators in the House and Senate back off from their anti-democratic tactics of obstruction. The people have spoken decisively.
Jack Humphrey
Williamsport
Submitted by Virtual Newsroom
