Now-a-days, I am hearing a constant proclamation from the conservative right of this country stating that “We The People are going to take back our country!”

That’s wonderful rhetoric. Stirring! Impressive.

But, when all the smoke blows away, a question remains in the air; “When it comes right down to it, from whom are you taking it back?”

As a fellow blogger pointed out to me recently, The United States of America is not a democracy. It is a democratic republic. James Madison made the following distinction between the two terms. He said that a republic is “a government in which a scheme of representation takes place.” A democracy, on the other hand, is “a society consisting of a small number of citizens who assemble and administer the government in person.”

The U.S. is far too large to be a pure democracy. Could you imagine all 300,000,000 of us voting on every piece of legislation to which our country must turn its attention? Nothing would ever get done.

So, as a democratic republic, we vote for people to represent us in the government, and they, in turn must answer to us every election day. (Wisely, Tom and Ben and John staggered these election days so that every two years the population could vote, and smart politicians could divine the mood of the country from the outcomes of those votes.)

In order to balance the scales a little bit, the Founding Fathers developed The Electoral College that sends electors to Washington to vote for the candidates that the voters of each state voted for initially. Each state has so many of these electors, according to how many senators the state has (always two) and how many members of The House of Representatives the state has. The number of representatives in the House for each state is determined by the population of that state.

Got all that? Good. Well get back to this in just a while. But first…

Some of the folks on the other side of the aisle say that we who voted Democratic in the last election have been duped. If that is the case, then Mr. Obama will be a huge disappointment, and he will one term president. (That’s the way the system works.)

Some say that Obama can do a great deal of ‘damage” in those four years.

Well, if anybody was going to ruin the country, it was going to Dubya. And even he, with his monumental incompetence, couldn’t achieve that task. (Personally, I have more faith in our system than to think that one man or even one administration can make that happen.)

Just for giggles, let's take a look at George's accomplishments in an eight-year span:

- He alienated The U.S. from the rest of the world in a time when we really need allies.

- He got us wrapped up into a senseless war based on, by his own administration’s admission, faulty intelligence. Remember “shock and awe”? Also, remember May 1, 2003, when President Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln with a huge banner behind him claiming “Mission Accomplished!” with war in Iraq? (Almost six years later,that mission still isn’t accomplished!) Donald Rumsfeld, who had advance knowledge of the banner, and who read a copy of the speech that the President was going to give on that occasion, said he was embarrassed by the whole scene, and suggested major alterations to the speech and to the “photo op”. This was advice which, for the most part, Bush chose to ignore!

- He plunged us into BILLIONS of dollars of debt to such frightening countries as China (!!!), which we will be paying off for generations to come.

- The 9th ward in New Orleans in still in shambles. Isn’t it funny how FEMA trucks couldn’t get through to New Orleans for days after Katrina, but Harry Connick, Jr. and Ellen Degeneres were able get there with their SUV’s filled with supplies??!! (“Nice job, Brownie!”)

- He managed to polarize the citizens of this country to the worst extent since the Civil War.

- He never did find Osama, did he?

- -He condoned torture, or at he least looked the other way while it was taking place. That resulted in widespread condemnation for the US from points across the globe. (Isn't it amazing how The Conservative Right was all over Bill Clinton when he said that he didn't inhale, and yet they never questioned it for a minute when Dubya proclaimed that water-boarding wasn't torture!)

- He stripped us of numerous civil rights while hiding behind the cloak of nationalism and patriotism.

These conservatives actually believe that George W. had his finger on the pulse of America, and that he made well informed and properly thought-out decisions. REALLY? And they have the audacity and arrogance to proclaim that the Obama supporters have been duped? (“Before you remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye, remove the log from your own.”)


Okay, so keeping all that in mind, along with everything that I showed you about the electoral college and republic vs. democracy, let’s take a look at the last three elections to determine what “the will of the people” really is in this country.

In the 2000 Presidential Election, George Bush received 271 electoral votes. He took 30 states, and he won 50,456,002 popular votes, which was 47.9% of all votes counted.

Al Gore received 266 electoral votes. He took 20 states and Washington D.C. He won 50,999,897 popular votes, which was 48.4% of all votes counted.

In other words, in 2000, 543,895 more We, The Peoples voted for Gore than for Bush. (A margin of 0.5%)

In the 2004 elections, George W. Bush received 286 electoral votes. He took 31 states. He garnered 62,040,610 popular votes, which came to 50.7 of all votes counted.

John Kerry received 251 electoral votes. He took 19 states plus Washington, D.C., and he received 59,028,444 of the popular votes, which came to 48.3% of all votes counted.

In other words, Bush won in 2004 by 3,012,166 We, The Peoples . (A margin of 1.4%)

In the 2008 Presidential Election, Barack Obama received 365 electoral votes. He carried 28 states plus Washington D.C. He garnered 69,456,897 of all votes counted, which came to 52.92%

John McCain received 173 electoral votes. He carried 22 states. He garnered 59,934,814 of the popular votes, which came to 45.66% of all votes counted.

In other words, Obama won in 2008 by 9,522,083 We, The Peoples. (A margin of 7.26%)

In the 2000 elections, Bush’s margin of victory in popular votes was negative 0.5%. In 2004, it was 1.4%. Subtract 0.5% from 1.4%, and you get 0.9%.

Compare that 0.9% to Obama’s 7.26%, and Barack won by a landslide.

Now, you can spin these numbers all you want, but the one deniable fact is Barack Obama was elected President of The United States of America by a wider vote margin in 2008 than George W. Bush received in 2000 and 2004 combined.

So again, I ask you, “You’re going to take the country back from WHOM?”

The only possible answer to that is, “From the majority of the American people.”