It's always funny to me when people say "a shift of 60,000 votes", as if 60,000 coin tosses could have come up tails instead of heads.
Voting doesn't work like that. 60,000 people didn't decide to vote first, then show up at the polls and flip a coin to decide who to vote for.
In order for Kerry to win Ohio, 60,000 bush voters would have to decide to stay home, and 60,000 people who stayed home would have to decide to vote for Kerry.
BTW, have you noticed that not a single MSM article has ever brought up the thought that if Ohio had swung the other way, Kerry would be "illigitimate" because he lost the popular vote by over 3 million.
You're right of course, and the 60,000 number would be trumpeted as you explain it if the results in Ohio had been reversed.
I brought it up mainly in order to point out how if that interpretation of Ohio is correct, then the same logic must also be applied to those blue states Kerry narrowly won.
As to the popular vote -- you're right again, something tells me that we wouldn't have heard much about the popular vote and the need to scrap the electoral college had Ohio gone blue.