Obama beat McCain by Ten Million Votes and bested him in the Electoral College by margin of 2:1.
Therefore, the election was not lost because a few older white voters stayed home.
Of course some white voters who stayed home didn’t deny McCain the Presidency.
What they did was, in their own self-absorption, refuse to stand up against the worst choice of leadership in generations.
We can’t always have our first choice. Most elections feature flawed candidates. We simply have to pick the better of the two (or more), not stay at home and pout if a suberb candidate isn’t in the mix.
And those who stayed home last November now share some of the blame for what we are all suffering. They did nothing — even one small vote — to prevent it.