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[quote] I think it is a lack of demand because isn't it that the lack of passengers in the late 60's and early 70's caused the railraods to want to give up their passenger service because it wasn't making a profit?[/quote]No, it was not the lack of demand.  Or, in a way it was, if you consider the availability of "cheap" airfares.  I put "cheap" in quotation mark as because nothing is really cheap or free.  Private railroads owned and maintained their own right-of-way, which was not the case with airlines (they didn't own airports and, therefore, had relatively low capital expenses).  With no other modes available, and no subsidies provided to any kind of transportation service whatsoever, private railroads had no problem paying for themselves.  As publicly funded airports started coming up, which made it possible for commercial airlines to offer low fares, the unfunded railroads were unable to withstand this unfair competition, and, even though demand still existed, it was not sufficient for the railroad companies to make profit (or even to cover the expenses).  At least theoretically, the problem could have been solved by establishing some kind of a trust fund, or any other major funding program, for railroads.  I don't know if any such proposal ever came up at that time.  But establishing Amtrak was a compromise, which, as some people thought, would not require subsidies for more than three years.  But it's a fantasy!  It's simply impossible to run a public transportation system (railroad in particular) without adequate funding.  The fact that Amtrak keeps running for already a fourth decade is largely due to the fact that demand still exists.  And even though this demand cannot be expected to make Amtrak "profitable", this demand does result in growing political support to Amtrak.  As for presidential candidates, the bottomline is that McCain has earned the most negative reputation as a Senator with regards to Amtrak.  Hillary Clinton has much better record.  But it may or may not make a difference in terms of how each of them would behave as a President.  Anyway, Congress seems to have even more power with these issues.
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