Why Obama won

To the Editor:

I find it amusing that Republicans have decided that the best way to find out why they lost the presidential election, is to ask other Republicans why they think Obama voters voted for the president.  How about asking the people who actually did vote for Obama why they voted that way?

I worked for both the McCaskill and the Obama campaign this election cycle. I spoke with hundreds of voters, from both sides of the aisle, and I may have a more accurate answer than “Obama supporters are all moochers.”

This excuse makes Romney supporters feel better I’m sure, declaring that those who voted differently than they did, were flawed.  This helps one avoid the fact that their candidate himself, or the policies being touted, were actually flawed in many voters’ eyes.

Here is one of the things I heard from Obama supporters:

“Obama understands the middle class better than Romney, the man who has told people with no health insurance to ‘visit the ER,’ and students who need help with tuition to ‘ask their parents for a loan.’”

I heard many concerned about Romney/Ryan feelings about women’s rights, including equal pay, access to birth control and freedom to make personal health care decisions.

Many young people told me that the Romney/Ryan plan to push a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was a violation of civil rights in their opinion.

Then there were the seniors afraid of Ryan’s Medicare and Social Security plans, as well as St. Louis County union workers who didn’t appreciate the union-bashing they had heard from the GOP duo.

There were parents concerned about Romney/Ryan’s plans for gutting PBS and public education, with the support of voucher programs.

There was the concern of many for our environment, believing that Obama was paying more attention, and taking global warming (and science!) seriously.

And I haven’t even touched on the lack of trust issue. Any candidate that changes his mind as often as Romney did is bound to have some voters who might not trust him.

Obama supporters aren’t fully satisfied with their president, but the alternative was so extreme in so many ways, that he couldn’t even be considered by voters in the middle.

I heard many reasons that folks in St. Louis County weren’t going to vote for Romney/Ryan, and not one of them (unless you count a student here and there who was worried about student loans) was voting for Obama because they wanted “more stuff.”

Here’s some truth: According to the Department of Health and Human Services, 4.3 million people are on welfare, 63 million voted for Obama.

The whining and finger-pointing that have been going on remind me of an athlete who played a decent, but not very passionate game, and loses to a more skilled, dedicated team. Afterward this athlete blames the ref, the other team, the food at the concession stand, his shoes being too tight, anything except for his own team. That athlete will never improve if he doesn’t look at how he can change his own game and at what he did wrong.

This will be the fate of the Republican Party if they don’t stop finger-pointing, and look at what they can do differently next time.

The world is not coming to an end, Obama is not the Antichrist, and Romney was not a great candidate. And, believe it or not, Obama supporters are not a bunch of anti-American moochers.

The truth hurts sometimes, but it’s the only way forward.

Carmen Bumgarner

Ballwin