Fifty-one percent does not a national majority make

To the Editor:

It’s gratifying that Alicia Washington thinks “we are living in a conservative America” — but she’s wrong, and it’s amusing that she thinks the way she does. George Bush was elected with 51 percent of the vote: a solid majority but no landslide. Only someone cooped up in such a left-wing incubator as Yale would, because of Bush’s hard-won victory, assume that a new fascist order has begun here in Amerikkka. In fact, it is the general voting public, not the Yale population, that we should use for our standard of left and right — and by that standard America is a pretty thoughtful, centrist place. Washington and her team of “bleeding die-hard liberals” should take this into account as they start working on their “new vision and new approach.” I wish them good luck.

Isaac Meyers ’01

Nov. 4, 2004