Well, first of all, let’s put it in perspective. Let’s before the mythology gets out there, Barack Obama got 2.1% more than George Bush got last time, 3.1 points better than Al Gore got in 2000, and 4.6% better than John Kerry got four years ago. I mean, this was, you know, the Electoral College magnified it, but I think a couple of things happened. First of all, there’s a natural desire for change at the end of eight years of one party running the White House. Second of all, our campaign did not inspire people to turn out. There are 4.1 million fewer Republicans who turned out to vote in 2008 than turned out in 2004. 2.7 million fewer veterans turned out to vote in 2008 than 2004. Over 4 million fewer people who go to Church more than once a week failed to turn out to vote. And then Barack Obama very wisely and smartly worked hard to grab very small but significant slices of our vote. He went after Evangelicals, he ran ads on Christian radio talking about his personal faith, suggesting that he was more pro-life than he was, he went after small business people. Look, he ran a center-right campaign. This guy, you know, we’ve now seen two Democrats get elected president by saying vote for me, I’ll cut your taxes. This guy talked more, a heck of a lot more about cutting taxes for 95% of Americans than he was ever willing to admit that he was going to raise taxes on 5% of Americans. And in a battleground state, people, your listeners who are in battleground states, heard on the radio and saw on TV an ad in which he said you know, there are two extremes – John McCain’s go it alone health care plan, and government-run health care, which is also extreme. And Barack Obama’s in the middle. I mean, when did you think you’d hear a Democrat decrying government-run health care as extreme? He ran an ad against John McCain saying he wants to tax your health care benefits, he’s a tax raiser. So you know, we had an unusual campaign. And at the end of the day, spurred on by the fact that he was an African-American with a good chance of becoming president, 3.3 million more African-Americans voted Democrat in 2008 than voted so in 2004, and 2.5 million more Latinos voted Democrat than voted Democrat in 2004. So you know, we’ve got to put it in perspective. This was a loss, I hate losing, they swept a whole bunch of good people out, but on the other hand, you know, they were talking 30-50 House seats. They got 19. And when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, nearly a hundred state senate seats changed hands. This year, ten did. When Ronald Reagan got elected president in 1980, three hundred state house seats changed hands. This year, 94.
TURDBLOSSOM FAIL.
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