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> Open letter to Senator John Kerry

10 November 2004, 01:11

I wonder how many similar letters have been written or thought about in the wake of a close and passionate election? Would not the supporters of Andrew Jackson, who won more votes to
that year’s candidate from Massachusetts, John Quincy Adams, want to angrily take quill pen in hand after their man lost the presidency in the House of Representatives (even though he clearly won the popular vote?).

How about poor Grover Cleveland? He was already the president, and won the popular vote in his bid for re-election, only to see the other guy end up with a majority in the Electoral College. Imagine having to leave the White House knowing full well that most of the people voted for you to stay. (Cleveland, at least, won the sweet revenge of re-winning the White House four years later).

Even the notorious Richard Nixon had a right to be sour: there was considerable evidence of voter fraud in both Illinois and Texas for John F. Kennedy. Had Nixon challenged those results and the courts agreed, there would have never been a Kennedy presidency, and perhaps the U.S.—with a far less paranoid Nixon as president in 1961—would have been spared Watergate as well.

And does anyone remember Al Gore? If there has ever been a man who should be haunted by
what might have been had only a few hundred votes been changed, or a few thousand more actually counted, it is Gore.

The point is this: all of these elections were far closer, with—in most cases—the loser actually
getting more popular votes than the winner.

None of that is the case this time. Kerry lost the election. He did not have a majority of the popular vote; and failed also in the electoral college. He was defeated. Bush beat him. Bush is the winner. He had the most popular votes and electoral votes. Bush gets to stay in the White
House for another four years, while the Democrats have to figure out a strategy to re-take it
four years from now.

Constantly replaying the 2004 election, exploring endlessly the "what ifs" and "what might have
beens" reminds me very much of a gambler whose horse lost by a nose. You can go over it and over it again and again, but nothing will change what has happened: you lost, the other guy won.

As a Democrat, I would really like to see our party move on.

Rick Haramis, Sante Fe, New Mexico