Today’s L.A. Times letters to the editor, because our voices matter:

Re “Romney blames loss on Obama ‘gifts,’ ” Nov. 15

Will somebody please let Mitt Romney know that the election is over and he lost? He had many, many months to present his vision for the future, and America (which he might not realize includes women, minorities and young people) rejected it. He should have let his eloquent concession speech serve as his final words.

Instead, he spewed a fictitious, bigoted and condescending view of why he lost: It wasn’t because he was poised to roll back women’s healthcare rights, give tax breaks to the rich or dismiss 47% of the country as takers; it was because young people, minorities and the working class were bribed with gifts and blindly made their decision based on free stuff.

In reality, the only gift they received was not getting stuck with a president who thinks access to healthcare, control over your own body and reproductive choices, and the chance at an affordable college education are handouts.

Eric Cook
Redondo Beach

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I guess I’m one of the “takers” Romney was talking about.

And he was right; I do want “stuff.” I want stuff like affordable healthcare for my family, affordable college loans for my children, a Social Security system that won’t be privatized and a Medicare system that won’t be “voucher-ized.”

I want stuff like a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, and a country that rewards hardworking immigrants rather than punishes them. Those are the reasons I voted for President Obama.

Eric Gardner
Redondo Beach

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Romney’s conclusion that people voted for Obama because he was giving them gifts only demonstrates how completely out of touch he is with the American electorate.

If anyone was offering gifts, it was Romney, who promised his wealthy donors and supporters that they would receive yet another tax cut.

I would have personally profited from a reduction in capital gains, but I am more interested in saving the country from becoming an oligarchy.

The gift Obama is giving to me is his intellect, his good judgment and his support of the middle class, who built this nation. That’s quite enough for me.

Barbara H. Bergen
Los Angeles

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To Romney: If you really want to see political gifts in action, please remember your support of multibillion-dollar Big Oil tax credits, tax breaks for wealthy Americans on capital gains/ordinary income, and deregulation of Wall Street after it brought the world economy to its knees in 2008.

Don Mackay
Torrance

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I’m neither young nor unemployed. I get no gifts from Obama. I do work 60 hours a week to annually earn less than 5% of what Romney makes without working at all.

Yet for 2011, I paid a greater percentage of my income in taxes to the federal government than Romney.

Romney sees people who work as “suckers.” He can’t go away quickly enough.

Bill Serantoni
Thousand Oaks

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Would Romney have us believe that the Koch brothers and businessman Sheldon Adelson were total altruists who didn’t expect multimillion-dollar tax breaks and other gifts in return for their multi-figure donations to his campaign?

The wonder isn’t that Romney lost but that he got as many votes as he did.

David Riley
Laguna Woods