Why Obama won re-election
There will be a couple of dozen explanations for the president’s re-election, and all will have merit. Most are pretty obvious:
The president’s campaign understood the power of the growing nonwhite population. They targeted demographic segments with sophisticated, focused marketing.
Romney was hamstrung by the right wing of the Republican Party, which forced candidates to the hard right during the primaries and twisted the nominee into a pretzel for the general campaign.
Romney took the wrong position on saving the car companies, and it cost him big in Ohio. And most people knew that Obama believes that hard work and personal initiative do build businesses.
Romney doesn’t need my pity, but he would have been a better candidate if he hadn’t been forced to pretend to be something he wasn’t. I’m not sure exactly what Mitt believes, but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t wear a three pointed hat.
But here are are a few other thoughts about what happened:
Republicans thought they had the enthusiasm factor. But social psychologists know that people, while motivated by the possibility of gain, are more motivated by the threat of loss. And a Romney presidency threatened the hard won gains of a lot of constituencies:
Labor mobilized to maintain their jobs and bargaining power.
Women responded to maintain freedom of choice and equal pay.
Students reacted to the possible loss of student grants and loans.
Latinos fought to hold onto an ownership in the American experience.
African-Americans reacted to the perceived threat to civil rights, and their quiet determination was demonstrated by standing in long lines to vote. Their mood wasn’t enthusiasm as much as stubborn persistence that said, ‘You tell me I can’t vote, I’ll show you I darn well will.’
My favorite image from this election was from news coverage of the president at a Chicago poll location to cast his early ballot. The camera showed an older black women who took the president’s ballot at her desk. She couldn’t help but sneak a peek, and the president saw her look at the ballot to see who he voted for, and he teased her. But good grief, can’t you just feel the incredible pride she must have experienced accepting the ballot of the nation’s first black president?
Conservatives need feel no shame in this loss. It was not conservative thought that lost this election. It was extremism. My prediction is that President Obama will disappoint liberals in his second term by going for changes necessary to get the budget under control. This will mean changes in entitlements, but it will also require taxes on the very wealthy.
It’s time for the extreme elements of the Republican Party to quit doubting the polls and the messages of the election. The Republican Party can’t insult half the population and tell women what to do with their bodies and expect to win elections.
Most important, Republican leaders need to repudiate the birthers and Donald Trump clowns who have come to symbolize, though they really don’t represent, the party.
The American populace is truly the melting pot that Ellis Island symbolizes, and America is not the image of 1950’s TV shows.
I’m one of the old white guys who would benefit greatly from a 20% tax cut, and I don’t want it. I’d rather have an America where people can see a doctor if they get sick. I’d rather have an America where people who work with their hands can retire with dignity when their bodies wear out from work.
I’m really quite happy with an America where there are lots and lots of people who don’t look like me, and I’m happy with a president who represents all of us.
Christine Taylor-Butler
6 months, 1 week agoNICE. Really Nice. A good and eloquent way to end the night. Thank you.
Johnathon Busby
6 months, 1 week agoObama won because he didn’t just want to be president of the richest 47%. A thousand reasons, but that one more than any other.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week agoIt can be boiled down to three things; Tea Party, Tea Party, Tea Party. Now it’s up to the Republicans to right their ship.
George Harris
Kansas City
6 months, 1 week agoA.W., when the entire stage full of Republican candidates said they wouldn’t accept one dollar of tax increase for ten dollars of spending cuts, they pretty well communicated the Republican pledge of non-cooperation and obstruction. If they do that again, there will be more polarization. I guess it’s a matter of perception, but my perception is that Obama went more than half way with Republicans and got slapped. I think Republicans need to look at the continued failure of their extreme candidates: Mourdock, Akin etc. I also think Republicans need to be more respectful of the president. No more “you lie”, no more “socialist” etc. etc. If this continues, it’s gonna be a long four years. The Obama campaign played hardball and beat deceitful tactics funded by tons of secret money. Your guy lost. He was beaten by a smart and capable leader who laid out his positions and won the election. Republicans should not underestimate Obama again. He’ll compromise, but he won’t allow Republicans to bully him anymore. The rest of us are tired of the nonsense, too.
Johnathon Busby
6 months, 1 week agoWhy was that a problem AW? He won, it seems to have been a good strategy for him. I bet Obama would meet the GOP in the middle on issues, if perhaps they wouldn’t swear to make him a one term president. And speaking of, they had one goal; not the health of the nation, just making sure Obama is 1 term only. And they couldn’t even manage that.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week agoThere will be a civil war in the Republican Party over these next few years as they get control over their more extreme factions. The Tea Party lost this election for Romney and they’ll go on doing so unless they are reigned in. Republicans need to become more reasonable or be reduced to third party status. I expect that there will be renewed interest in a grand bargain with tax increased and some entitlement reforms along the lines of Simpson Bowles. Grover Norquist pledges will be set aside for the good of the country. They might even entertain the Dream Act or immigration reform.
Johnathon Busby
6 months, 1 week agoWe take it at face value; you don’t like Obama. That’s all the content there was in your posts. Well, that, and you want Obama to bow to GOP demands despite having won the election.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week ago“this country isn’t about Obama.”
….and it’s not about the Tea Party either. They won in 2010 and behaved as if they were only elected to serve Dick Army, Grover Norquist, and the Koch brothers.
Every elected official has an obligation to serve the entire constituency. I hope that Obama, the house Republicans, and senate Democrats fulfill that obligation.
Johnathon Busby
6 months, 1 week agoYou said a lot of things before that, AW. But sure, whatever, it’s not about Obama. That’s fine. …so?
And “we” would be the people who are reading your posts. Which would be more than just me.
JR Beillenhouser
6 months, 1 week ago“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville
Steve Alleman
Kansas City
6 months, 1 week agoRepublicans still in denial. It would be funny if it were not so pathetic. Are you guys still saying the polls were wrong? Get over yourselves. The country has rejected the teabaggers. Get used to it.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week agoI love the recrimination of the losers. They won because…..wah!
Consider this. Maybe you’re wrong. Maybe people are telling you to try a little harder to work with the dems and give us effective efficient government. Maybe they can do arithmetic. So let’s a follow Speaker Boehner’s example and start fresh.
Phil Cardarella
6 months, 1 week agoDon’t pity Mitt — but don’t blame the salesman, either, when the public (having been cautioned to read the ingredients on the box by guys like Akin) won’t buy the product.
Sure, Mitt forgot that the servants have ears (and videocameras!), so he got caught saying what the whining, put-upon plutocrats really think about the peasantry, but that was just a packing mistake.
Tell a few million Americans that the industry that feeds their family should be allowed to go bankrupt — because you favor a plan that would destroy their union and pensions so that some vulture capitalists could pick GM’s bones? Oddly enough, they tend to vote for the other guy who saved them. (When Obama said he could not let GM go under because it would cost a millin jobs in Ohio, it was both an expression of sympathy for workers and a cynical political observation about a swing state. Good governance was good politics.)
Tell Latinos that you favor giving green cards to Chinese students who graduate from US colleges, but think that the millions of Latino kids who grew up here, pledged allegience to no flag but ours, obeyed the law and were willing to go to college or serve in the military should be deported? I am amazed that even 27% voted for him.
Tell women that they have no right to control their own bodies that is not subject to a fertilized zygote? I’m surprised his own wife voted for him. (Of course, she knew he was lying.)
Tell working folks that pay 20-25% in taxes that billionaires should pay less than 15%? Tough sell.
But that was the list of ingredients he had to sell — and America wasn’ buying.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week agoIt all comes down to simple arithmetic. Old white guys are subtracting and the opposition is adding.
Mark Hastert
6 months, 1 week ago“Sandy was a gift from God ”
There, that proves it. If you guys were paying any attention to the real polling data you’d have known that Romney peaked shortly after the first debate and was fading steadily.
There’s ignorance and then there’s willful ignorance.
JR Beillenhouser
6 months, 1 week agoMass cuts in employment. You wanted it, you got it.
We tried to warn you, but dems don’t understand math or how an economy works.
Enjoy those “free” birth control pills (that will cause insurance costs to soar).
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/nov/8/picket-companies-plan-massive-layoffs-obamacare-be/
Enjoy your victory, it will be short lived, as now America finally gets the bill for all of those great policies Obama planned for us.
JR Beillenhouser
6 months, 1 week agohttp://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/267095-interior-proposes-shielding-federal-lands-in-west-from-drilling
Obama in the debates said just the opposite. Of course he was not called on it.