Final note to the Lefties: Sixty million people in this country think more like I do than like you do...

Put aside for a moment the idiocy of believing that everyone who voted for the same candidate you did thinks the same way as you about everything, and let's just roll with this person's premise for a moment.

Well, it certainly is correct that 60 million people voted for Bush -- 62,040,606 according to the latest figures on Dave Leib's site. But, on the other hand, a whole bunch of folks voted for Kerry as well -- 59 million of them, in fact. (59,028,109). And, come to think of it, almost another half a million voted for Nader (463,647), almost as many voted for Badnarik, the Libertarian candidate, (397,231), and a slightly small number voted for other candidates (371,103). Presidential elections in which an incumbent runs are always referendums on the current administration, and that means that 60,260,080 people voted against Bush!

So that means that while 62 million people think more like this blogger (accepting this drastically simplistic premise), it also means that 60 million don't!

Gee, that doesn't sound like such a big difference now, does it?

Of course, given the quality of the postings on the weblog in question, (which, I have to admit, I only glanced through, my threshhold for bullshit and idiocy being extremely low these days) it would, I think, be too much to try to explain the reality that when questioned on specifics of policy issues, American voters align themselves more with liberal or progressive positions than with those of the right-wing. And, as the Schiavo case brought clearly to our attention, when issues come to the forefront due to actual real-world events, and the GOP acts on them in a fashion dictated by their dogma, a majority of the public disagrees with their actions, and (once again) accepts the progressive point of view as being the more correct one.

The dilemma for Democrats is in how to reduce this apparent paradox and get people to vote in accordance with the things they actually believe in, instead of with the pie-in-the-sky offered to them by the GOP. The dilemma of many of those on the right (like the blogger in question) is that they can't seem to comprehend that there is a paradox at all.

[Note: I deliberately haven't named the blogger in question, or provided a link to the weblog, but for those interested it's easy enough to get there through the post on Lawyers, Guns and Money.]

Update (4/3): Chris Bowers has been crunching numbers on the 2004 election, and he's posted some of the results here and here.