Get over yourself.

Still doesn't take away from the fact that he had a large amount of support. We don't know which way the non-voters would have gone, so I find that somewhat irrelevant.

It is irrelevant if your statement is that Bush had a large amount of support and that he received more votes than anyone else and a majority of the votes cast. That's quite true.

But if you're going to say, as you did, "the majority of America is 'part of the problem' then because that is exactly who voted him into office 'the 2nd time around,'" it's quite relevant because that statement is inaccurate -- the majority of America did not vote for Bush because only about 55% of eligible voters actually voted at all. More people didn't vote for anyone than voted for Bush.

I'm not disagreeing with your premise. Bush won the election because most people who voted saw him as the better choice compared to Kerry. Bush did get a majority of the popular vote. And as I said, while I am not a Bush fan, I have little patience with the knee-jerk reaction that too many have for him.

My point was more to comment on the apathy of way too many Americans, as well as to clarify that it was a majority of voters rather than a majority of Americans who voted for Bush, than to suggest that Bush didn't really have that much support in the 2004 election.

Well, I realize this is getting theory-heavy here, but still . . .

-If the premise is that people who vote for Bush are "part of the problem" or "responsible" for later actions, it's not hard for me to think that there is some sort of analog whereby people who stand by the wayside and don't vote are somehow similarly "responsible" for being pathetic douche bags who take no ownership or responsibility for their own welfare and their nation. In short: if you're going to say those who did vote for Bush have blood on their hands, unless you want to really fall victim to the fallacy of Monday morning quarterbacking you'd almost have to argue that those who didn't actively work against Bush have the same blood on their hands. With this comparison, I think it's easy to see why I think the whole discussion becomes ridiculous.

-Additionally, there is no reason to think the non-voting population is distributed differently from the voting population, is there? So while you're correct that the statement "the majority of America voted for Bush" is technically incorrect, the spirit is still very relevant: America slightly preferred Bush to Kerry, making a vast number of people "responsible" under the earlier claims of unclean hands. If you combine this with the above point, it would certainly appear that the 'majority' of Americans would have blood on their hands, according to OneTimeSBX, no?

I see what you are saying......good call. I didn't really even think about the fact that it was a pretty low year for voter turnout.

I do agree with RC though, excellent post.

Unfortunately, that's the problem. It wasn't a low year for voter turnout, at least comparitively speaking. Nationally, voter turnout has hovered in the 50%-55% range in every presidential election since at least 1980.

I agree. And where RC says: "there is no reason to think the non-voting population is distributed differently from the voting population, is there?", I would say that one could reasonably guess that the distribution of Bush supporters might be higher among the non-voting population compared to the voting population. One could reasonably speculate that the reason some of these lazy bums didn't vote is because they were relatively satisfied with the status quo -- in this case, Bush -- and weren't as motivated as those who wanted to throw Bush out.

I'm pretty sure that statistics on non-voters show that most are younger and lean more liberal. Therefore, I would say that if all eligible Americans were forced to vote, things would have turned out very different.

Hahh.....well shoot. 2004 was the first election that I was able to vote in......so I guess I never really paid attention to the statistics before then.

I don't know if I would say that it would have turned out different for Bush vs. Kerry. I know plenty of people who generally vote Democrat that thought Kerry was nothing short of awful. Obviously that shouldn't be taken as a representation of every non-voter.......but I'm just saying.

Point taken. I guess I should have spesified that "if the Dems had put up a decent candidate, the non-voters forced to vote chould change things".

From a demographic point of view, the liberal tendencies of the young is kind of overplayed at this point in time - one of the amazing things to come from recent generational research surrounding Gen Y is that it is actually skewing more conservative on many issues. This would be something where 'common knowledge' (ie young people don't vote plus young people are more liberal) doesn't necessarily hold . . . the actual statistics would be interesting, though.

I have lost a brother and 2 good friends there...so I am keeping my comments to myself because I may wind up saying things liable to get me banned....but thank you all for those that did comment on the topic at hand.