Posted on 07/20/2009 1:43:08 PM PDT by Steelfish
Voting rate dips as older whites stay home
About 63.6 percent of the nation's eligible voters cast ballots in November
WASHINGTON - For all the attention generated by Barack Obama's candidacy, the share of eligible voters who actually cast ballots in November declined for the first time in a dozen years.
The reason: Older whites with little interest in backing either Barack Obama or John McCain stayed home.
Census figures released Monday show about 63.6 percent of the nation's eligible voters, or 131.1 million people, voted last November.
Although that represented an increase of 5 million voters — virtually all of them minorities — the turnout relative to the population of eligible voters was a decrease from 63.8 percent in 2004.
Ohio and Pennsylvania were among those showing declines in white voters, helping Obama carry those battleground states.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Exactly my point. Say what you will about McCain, can any of you McCain haters honestly say that America would have been worse off on July 20, 2009 than we are today if McCain were President? Would we have a runaway Congress running amuk? Would we have a leader bowing down to Saudi kings and shaking hands with evil dictators all the while smacking Israel in the face? Would we be facing this monstrosity of a health care nightmare? Would the House have passed Cap and Tax? I think you know the answer.
You holier than thou conservatives refusing to vote for anything less than your perfect candidate may have (not necessarily did) put us in this boat. Voting has consequences but so does NOT voting and you have to accept the consequences of your choices. We are here PERHAPS because of those who stayed home.
I hear the food banks are about to give away a bunch.
Being that the GOP Primaries were finished long before the Democratic Primaries, it is doubtful that many Democrats voted in the GOP Primaries. However, if you recall, there was a movement lead by Rush Limbaugh called "Operation Chaos" where he encouraged Republicans to vote for Hillary in open Democratic primaries.
And we all know how well Mr. Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" scheme worked.
I'll go you one better, don't let anyone convince you to vote for Liberal Lite just because he/she has an "R" after his or her name.
And this argument about not voting or voting for third party elects Democrats crap has got to stop.
Here's a novel idea, actually run Candidates people want to vote for rather than going with the RINO mantra of "vote for the lesser of two evils" so Democrats won't get elected.
I know its a radical concept but hey maybe its time for such.
Thompson’s name used to be on McCain-Feingold, since that’s the reason I’ve walked away from McCain I couldn’t do it. I’ll admit he’s clean on other reasons to not like McCain, but I couldn’t do it.
Yep, and they helped elect Democrats that are literally destroying our nation in front of our eyes...something illegals could not have done in a hundred years.
I wonder if they still feel it was worth it? Was throwing the economy away, allowing the Dems to take over our financial system, change the way we generate and distribute power, abandoning Israel really, really worth it? How about embryonic stem cell research, federally funded abortions, global humiliation?
Nothing John McCain and all the RINOs in America would ever have done approaches what Pelosi, Reed, and Obama are doing right now.
This nation and a lot of "conservatives" got what they deserved..unfortunately, I got it too. The worst part is that we can't change it even with the chest beating going on here..elections have consequences.
Understand completely. He was the closest guy running to being a conservative that I could surmise. Again, a punt.
Asked to identify their reasons for not voting, 46 percent of all whites said they didn't like the candidates, weren't interested or had better things to do, up from 41 percent in 2004. Hispanics had similar numbers for both years.
Many of us here have known this for some time, even before the November vote, we felt this would be the case. We debated which would be worse: McCain with Dem Congress, or Obama with a Dem Congress, with Obama's presidency spurring the Republicans to a big comeback in 2010?
We are now in the very weeks when that question will be answered. We need to push Congress to defeat Obama's legislative excesses, and identify the Republican candidates who can bring about victories in 2010 and 2012. And we need to throw it back in the faces of McCain, Powell, and RINOs and moderates everywhere who do nothing but demoralize Republican voters with their habit of pandering and sucking up to every interest group they can find to pander to and suck up to. They, including Bush and Rove, are who caused the losses in 2006 and 2008.
The same conservative, Republican message for everyone potential voter.
I wrote in Hunter. McCain carried my state, so it didn’t matter anyway. But, if it ever comes down to my individual vote? Maybe the GOP better earn it. I’m done with the candidates getting more and more Democrat with every election cycle. I held my nose and voted for Bush and that’s the last time.
Everyone who did anything at all to make Juan McCain our nominee caused the loss of 2010. You can blather all you like about how people simply must vote for a pathetic Republican nominee, but many will not do it.
Better to work to produce a much better nominee next time, because you will not change peoples ways in this, as several elections have shown.
And really not that horrible a punt. I just couldn’t punt last year. Of course I live in AZ, being in a non-swing state gives you some cover, in a non-swing state I might not be such a purist.
Of course some white voters who stayed home didn’t deny McCain the Presidency.
What they did was, in their own self-absorption, refuse to stand up against the worst choice of leadership in generations.
We can’t always have our first choice. Most elections feature flawed candidates. We simply have to pick the better of the two (or more), not stay at home and pout if a suberb candidate isn’t in the mix.
And those who stayed home last November now share some of the blame for what we are all suffering. They did nothing — even one small vote — to prevent it.
I’m not sure if I’d be more or less of a purist if I lived in a swing state. McCain won AZ, so like you might non-vote didn’t matter. Part of me thinks that in a swing state I might be more willing to just keep the dems out, part of me thinks though that if my vote REALLY mattered I might be more severe. Some projections are having AZ morph to a swing state, guess I’ll find out who I really am then.
This points out that we win by motivating our core constituencies to show up and vote, not by pandering to the Left. The Left’s constituencies will not vote for a watered down “Democrat lite” when the real thing is on the ballot.
This is what I don't get. People who compromise day in and day out (can't get this, yet - don't have the cash; that convertible is nice but too impractical - I can't ferry the kids, and their stuff, around in that) suddenly decide - on the one thing in which hundreds of millions of other people also get a say - that unless the GOP candidate agrees with them on every major issue, they're sitting this one out. The only place you might get everything you want is in heaven. Actually, probably not even there - I suspect that in heaven, you get everything God wants.
...and yet right next door in WV, a state with a very white and more aged population, a state where no Republican holds a state-wide office and both Sens. and two out of our three Reps are Rats......McCain won.
PA is heavily Catholic in the two major metros (Philly and Pitt) with sizeable Jewish population on the mainline. WV is made up largely of Scots-Irish protestants, who comprise the core of Sarah Palin’s base.
Yup, hope and change.
Wait till the “older whites” can only get assisted suicide counseling instead of hip replacements. Wait till the “older whites” cannot drive their RVs and campers down to Florida due to gas @$10.00
Itell ya the “older whites” are going to be lynched by the younger generations of this country for putting future generations into socialized servitude to pay for all this “hope and change” (aka crap....)
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