It’s been about 10 days since President Barack Obama scored re-election
and I am still thinking about what the victory means for America moving
forward. A number of things happened during
the campaign to make this election one of the most intriguing contests in our
lifetime. There were a number of winners beside the President, and there were a
number of losers beside Governor Romney. But one thing is for sure, this
election cycle was a rollicking ride that drove Republicans crazy, got women
riled up, made stars out of statisticians, made fools out of experts, let gays
finally catch the rainbow and got me wondering what ever happened to the
poor. America has changed for the better and for the
worse.
So what happened in the first Presidential election of the
second decade in the 21st century?
1) For the first time in American history a presidential candidate
can no longer bank on overwhelming support from whites alone to win national
elections. Governor Romney got one of the highest percentages of white votes in
modern tracking history (59%) and yet still lost the election rather
convincingly. Targeting the white vote may still work – for now – in Southern
and Great Plains states. But to hang your political hat on just winning a sizable majority of white votes won’t win you in a
national election. A post-election
analysis complied by a Republican research firm concluded, “Romney's performance among white voters would
have been sufficient to put him in the White House in any election before
2008.” But in 2012’s America white
voters were not enough.
Chart from Real Clear Politics.
The American electorate is becoming more black, brown, tan, and yellow. President Obama won re-election despite receiving the lowest percentage of white votes of any candidate since 1988 when President George H. W. Bush shellacked Governor Michael Dukakis. Governor Dukakis only got 40% of the white vote. Dukakis’s white support was fairly strong until a black man was dragged into the campaign. Allies of then Vice-President Bush’s ’88 Presidential bid yoked a menacing black criminal named Willie Horton around Dukakis’s neck, effectively dooming his effort for the White House.
President Obama’s white support was actually a point lower
than Dukakis’s ’88 numbers. In 2008, the President won 43% of the white vote;
in 2012 that percentage slipped to 39%. The President held steady by winning
80% of the non-white vote in both 2008 and 2012. Despite getting low white
voter support the President was able to win because of the continual drop of
white voters nationally.
Chart courtesy of Slate.com
Since the 1992 Presidential election the percentage of white
voters has steadily declined. That year whites were 87% of the electorate. By
the 2004 election the percentage had dipped to 77%. In 2008 the ratio had
fallen to 74%. In this year’s election the number slipped further to 72%. By contrast, the percentage of non-white
voters went from 23% in 2004 to 27% by 2008 and inching up in 2012 to 28%. A closer look reveals Latino voters grew from
about 8% of the electorate in 2004 to an all-time of 10% in 2012. 10% may be a small
figure but the Latino vote may have been the difference in at least four swing states
as President Obama got nearly 3/4th of the Hispanic vote (see the go-to
website Latino Decisions). Their influence in the electorate will only
grow as reportedly around 50,000 Latino/Hispanic teenagers turn 18 years old in
the United States. Those are 50,000 potential new registered Hispanic voters
each month.
Further proof of the declining significance of white votes
is that Governor Romney won
white female voters by a hefty
margin (14% gap). His support among white females voters was larger than it was
for President George W. Bush in 2004 and Senator John McCain in 2008. Yet
President Obama won the overall female vote by a double-digit margin. Why? Even
though there are more white women then white men, white women are making up a
smaller portion of the overall electorate from 44% in 2004 down to 38% in 2012.
Non-white women’s impact in national elections has become more significant than
white women’s.
Republicans candidates have lost the popular vote in five of
the last six Presidential elections (including in 2000 when Gore won the
popular vote but Bush won the Electoral College). That trend is bound to
continue unless Republicans expand their demographics. If the GOP wants to be
relevant in the future they better learn to reach out to non-white voters or
they will continue to experience Election Day drubbings. While immigration policy got a lot of play as
to why Latinos ran from the Republican Party, people of color are not single
issue-voters. Republicans do have to end their xenophobic and racist view of
immigration as well as adapt policies that people of color and young voters
(President Obama won the youth by 24%) can support across a broad range of
issues. A little policy outreach to minorities could have gone a long way in
this election. If Governor Romney had gotten the same support from Latinos that
President George W. Bush had in 2004 (estimated at 40%) he would have won the
2012 Presidential Election in a rout. (Here is a great interactive map published
by Latino Decisions that let the user adjust Governor Romney’s percentage of
Latino support to see how many more Electoral College votes he could have
gotten with more support from the Hispanic community.)
2) The candidate or party with the money advantage does not
automatically win. Team Romney outspent the Obama campaign by an estimated $90
million. Republican Super PACs outspent Democratic Super PACs by an astounding $260
million. Even with that enormous cash
advantage the Republicans lost the Presidential race and some Senate and Congressional
races they should have won. I’m sure Republican Super PACs are scratching their
heads at the fact that Democrats won the total popular vote over Republicans
53.6% to 46.9% in Senate races; in Congressional races the Democrats too won
the popular vote over Republicans 49% to 48%. Several websites are calculating figures
such as cost per Presidential vote, cost per electoral vote, and total return
on campaign investment. Some of the numbers are shameful and embarrassing at
the same time.
The moneyed class shoveled dough into Republican Super PACs
at an eye-popping clip. Casino king Sheldon Adelson was the leading contributor
to Republican Super PACs dolling out a cool $53 million in cash. Of the nine
candidates he bankrolled or supported via Super PAC eight of them lost. The
candidate who did score victory won so narrowly that he was not declared winner
until the day after the election.
At least Adelson got something for his money. That is more
than can be said for Republican Linda McMahon of Connecticut. McMahon is the
wife World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) founder Vince McMahon. McMahon spent a
total of $100 million of her own money
in attempts to win a Senate seat in 2010 and in 2012. She got body-slammed at
the polls twice. McMahon lost her 2010 bid by 11 percentage points. In her
second attempt on November 6th she lost by 12 percentage points. Policy, not money, wins elections.
I’m not going to ignore the gross spending by Democrats and
Progressives. The Left also spent sickening amounts money (see chart). Endless
emails and text messages from the State Democratic Party, the Democratic
National Committee, and the Obama campaign soliciting campaign cash greatly annoyed
me. It seemed to get worse as the campaign drew closer to an end. I admit their
begging worked but it got to be a bit extra at the end. But I take heart that I
got a much better return on my contributions than money-moguls Sheldon Adelson
and Linda McMahon.
Info-Graphic courtesy of Fast Company. Click here for larger view.
3) Polls, pundits and partisanship all converged to shock
Romney supporters in the 2012 election. Partisan political pundits, commentary
hacks and subjective pollsters were embarrassed by the November 6th results,
exposing the erroneousness of predictions based on emotion, party bias and
skewed data. The pre-election forecasts of a relatively easy Obama win by statisticians
like Nate Silver, Drew Linzer, Sam Wang and Simon Jackman sparked a much-needed
battle between conservative pundits, network personalities and data scientist.
The list of partisan experts who predicted that Governor Mitt
Romney would handily defeat President Barack Obama reads like a who’s who of the
Right (and some on the Left). Even purportedly impartial academics armed with
data (most notably University of Colorado system professors Kenneth Bickers and
Michael Berry) wound up scrambling for alibis as to why their predictions were
terribly wrong.
“Experts” on both sides of the aisle thumbed their nose at
the data analysts who predicted that President Obama is likely to win
re-election barring some monumental occurrence that would shift the election.
They were ridiculed because they supposedly lacked a sharp political instincts
or a savvy awareness of Washington politics, as if these are pre-requisites for
making a mathematical forecast. But their lack of political reasoning is precisely
why their forecasts were so accurate. As best they could the statisticians
removed human traits such as gut instincts, intuition and biased cheerleading from
their computations to, well, make predictions about human behavior.
Using survey data from various state and national polling
firms Silver, Linzer and others ran thousands of Election Day simulations via
computers each using their own forecasting models that controlled for such
things as party identification, voter enthusiasm or lack thereof, economic
factors, Presidential job approval ratings, geography, and biases and errors that
all polls have. Even though each forecaster constructed different algorithms to
control for a list of variables there were miniscule differences between each
of their predictions. They found the
characterization of the race between President Obama and Governor Romney as a
“toss up” laughable. None of their simulations ever gave Governor Romney more
than a 40% chance to win at any point during the Presidential campaign. One
forecaster, Emory’s Drew Linzer predicted back in June that Obama would win
precisely 332 electoral votes.His computations never really deviated from that
estimate between June and Election Day. (Dr. Linzer explains his forecasting model in a November 15th post.) What really drove political analysts
and network personalities batty was this group predicted President Obama had
around a 91% chance to win re-election.
Their predictions over the last few weeks of the campaign were
at odds with what political “experts”, pollsters and the news media were
selling to their audiences. The Right was particularly steamed at anyone who
predicted anything less than a Romney landslide. Conservatives both moderate
and Far Right sharpened their claws and attacked Silver, Linzer and the gang. Some
accused them of being in the tank for Obama. Others said they were part of some
liberal conspiracy to make numbers for President Obama and the Democrats look
better than they were to influence voters. As the election drew closer more
commentators and journalists sought to personally discredit the data experts.
Some resorted to name-calling, others penned nasty columns questioning their
math acumen, and some even hurled anti-gay slurs and insults at Nate Silver in
order to discredit his work. Even those
who did not resort to personal attacks thought the “number crunchers” relied
too much on scientific data at the expense human intuition. Often their allies
on the Left who cited the statistician’s results did so without great faith in
their forecasts (see John Cassidy of The New Yorker magazine). To the political
pundit, “gut feelings” trumps hard data; their “gut” told them it was a close
race that was tilting toward Governor Romney.
But Silver, Linzer, Wang, Jackman along with a few supporters
in the media stood by their findings. Despite the constant barrage of criticism
they continued to insist that the contest was never a “toss up” or “too close
to call” at any point in the final weeks of the campaign. In fact, Silver – who also accurately
predicted the 2008 race and was nearly perfect in the 2010 midterm elections – expressed
such confidence in his work that he gave lesson on what is and isn’t a “toss
up”. After observing 19 of 20 polls showing President Obama in the lead with
just three days before Election Day he wrote in his blog FiveThirtyEight, “A tossup
race isn’t likely to produce 19 leads for one candidate and 1 for the other —
any more than a fair coin is likely to come up heads 19 times and tails just
once in 20 tosses. (The probability of a fair coin doing so is about 1 chance
in 50,000.).”
But still most “experts” including Governor Romney’s
campaign staff insisted they were on their way to a big victory on November 6th.
President Obama’s campaign manager David Axelrod said after the election that
one of his friends in the Romney campaign told him they genuinely expected Romney
to win the election. They were so confident that while the election results
were coming in Governor Romney told reporters that he wrote an acceptance
speech but not a concession speech. Team Romney even had a website for President-Elect Romney that was launched (supposedly by accident) the night of
the election. Instead the Romney- Ryan team was stunned loss. It’s reported
that Governor Romney was “shell shocked” after the defeat.
Many experts, pollsters and news personalities were fooled
into thinking that the race was still very close because of what the national polls
were reporting. Most polls showed a neck and neck race that was within the
margin of error. Some had the President up 1 point; others had Romney up 2 to 7
points. Some showed a tie. But polls
only show you who is ahead at the time the poll was taken. It does not forecast
how likely a candidate is to maintain that lead and win an election.
The limit of “gut feelings” in predicting an election is
that a person can think that one event can make a drastic enough change to flip
a race. One event almost never moves poll numbers beyond the margin of error. Poll
numbers may sway on one direction or another but it’s usually only a temporary
reaction to new events. Whereas forecasters understand that generally a confluence
of events - more than one or two events
- are likely to have an impact on polls which may alter forecasts. One
event does not really matter in voter choices.
For instance, many prominent Republicans like Haley Barbour and others
publically said that Hurricane Sandy stalled Governor Romney’s momentum and
flipped the race in the President’s favor. They seem to suggest that Hurricane
Sandy and the subsequent imagery of President Obama and Republican Governor
Chris Christie working in a bi-partisan manner won the race for the President.
But statistical analysis by forecasters and mathematicians paint a different
picture. There was a small lift in the President’s approval and favorability ratings
that equated to about a 1-point rise in the polls. But Silver and the crew
showed that Hurricane Sandy and the President’s response to the disaster only wrapped
tighter what they saw as the already sealed re-election of President
Obama.
Here is Nate Silver's appearance on "Morning Joe" on November 20th talking about the accuracy of his 2012 prediction. He also talked about the shortcomings of polls.
Here is Nate Silver's appearance on "Morning Joe" on November 20th talking about the accuracy of his 2012 prediction. He also talked about the shortcomings of polls.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Nate Silver, Drew Linzer, Sam Wang, Simon Jackman and others
never claimed to be politically savvy like the political experts supposedly were.
But they know math. And
they were right . Even before the election proved them right
they warned that the much ballyhooed enthusiasm gap enjoyed by Governor Romney
was probably not significant enough to tilt the election in his favor. They
found that Romney’s so-called wave of momentum rippling through the nation had
actually peaked nine days after the first debate. The consensus was that
Governor Romney’s “bounce” had stalled on around October 12th (the day
he had a 40% chance to win the election). Governor Romney’s slip in the polls
began on October 13th and ended with him suffering a bitter defeat
three and half weeks later. In addition,
they found October 13th was the same day that President Obama began
to regain the support he lost after his poor performance in the first debate. They
also found that if any candidate had the wind at their back in the final days
of the campaign it was President Obama. No one in the media believed them, particularly
the group that conservative columnist David Frum calls “the conservative
entertainment complex”.
Members of the “conservative entertainment complex” appear
each day on FOX News Channel, talk radio, and on websites such as RedState.com.
This “entertainment complex” includes authors of anti-Obama books and in some
cases newspaper and magazine columnists. “Entertainers “ like Ann
Coulter , Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean
Hannity and other mouthpieces of the Far Right assured their audience that Governor
Romney would take back the White House for Republicans on November 6th.
Fox & Friends co-host Steve
Doocy took his extremism a step further by publicly wondering whether the 47%
Governor Romney spoke about should be allowed to vote.
They knew they were right because they said so and biased
pollsters who tilted their findings toward Romney confirmed it. Newspaper editorial
and magazine writers like Wall Street Journal’s conservative columnist Peggy
Noonan, widely considered a shrewd conservative intellectual, alleged that
Governor Romney would win the Presidency because she felt “vibrations”. George
Will (who astonishingly predicted Governor Romney would win Minnesota), William
Kristol, David Brooks and others joined the prediction craze and told their
readers that a lopsided Romney victory was imminent. They pinned their hopes on
an alleged silent majority that were neglected by national pollsters.
Supposedly, this silent group would show up at the polls in droves, inspired by
the wave of momentum that Governor Romney purportedly had. The truth is the
highly publicized silent majority not only remained silent, it was invisible,
too. And Romney’s alleged momentum was really no-mentum.
The “conservative entertainers” had a fundamental belief
that the 2008 election of President Obama was a fluke, as evident by the
non-stop campaign on FOX News and on radio shows like Rush Limbaugh to
delegitimize the President. They figured the electorate would revert back ‘to normal’
circa 2004. They pointed to the fact there wasn’t the same massive euphoric
crowds at Obama campaign rallies like there were in 2008 as anecdotal evidence that
things were ‘back to normal’. By contrast they pointed to a string of Romney
gatherings with increasingly huge numbers with more enthusiastic
supporters. Governor Romney even joked
about wondering if the people were there to see him or a rock star. Other
“entertainers” pointed to the number of Romney-Ryan yard signs and bumper
stickers they saw across various neighborhoods in comparison to Obama – Biden
signs as a clue that Romney was poised to win.
Some Right-leaning pollsters insisted that Democratic turnout,
particularly African American and young voters, would not approach the 2008 totals. Among them was Neil Newhouse who was in
charge of internal polling for the Romney campaign. He skewed his internal
polling data with the theory that the electorate would mirror the 2004 election
rather than the 2008 surprise. This caused his results to significantly
overestimate Romney’s polling numbers. The “entertainers” and the Romney
pollsters discovered that yard signs and bumper stickers don’t vote. And that
no matter how large the crowd, each person in the crowd is only one vote no
matter how enthusiastic they are. And
the funny thing about voting is that an unenthusiastic vote counts just as much
as an enthusiastic one. (In December the Republican research group Resurgent Republic published a graphic showing why the difference in voter enthusiasm did not matter in this election.)
In their defense, President Obama’s win did defy political history. No other incumbent President won re-election with factor’s against him like a high unemployment rate; his favorability lingering at or below 50%; an opponent with a significant lead in voter’s perception of who would be better at fixing the economy; and an opponent who also held a modest lead with independent voters. Those factors have historically led to incumbents being ‘fired’ like President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and President George H. W. Bush in 1992. But what President Obama had that they did not have was an improving – albeit slowly – economy, foreign affairs achievements, a generally high likeability among the electorate, and rarity in which more last minute undecided voters broke for President Obama than for Governor Romney. Historically, last minute undecided voters nearly always side with the challenger rather than the incumbent.
In their defense, President Obama’s win did defy political history. No other incumbent President won re-election with factor’s against him like a high unemployment rate; his favorability lingering at or below 50%; an opponent with a significant lead in voter’s perception of who would be better at fixing the economy; and an opponent who also held a modest lead with independent voters. Those factors have historically led to incumbents being ‘fired’ like President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and President George H. W. Bush in 1992. But what President Obama had that they did not have was an improving – albeit slowly – economy, foreign affairs achievements, a generally high likeability among the electorate, and rarity in which more last minute undecided voters broke for President Obama than for Governor Romney. Historically, last minute undecided voters nearly always side with the challenger rather than the incumbent.
The fact that President Obama defied history and won
re-election brought out the worst elements of the extreme Right Wing
“entertainers”. These folks include Karl Rove who had a meltdown on FOX because
he was unwilling to concede Ohio even after all the major networks and FOX’s
own research team called the state for President Obama. Two days later Rove
constructed a myth that the President suppressed the vote (thereby providing an
excuse as to why he was wrong in predicting a Romney win). Bill O’Reilly said the people who voted for
the President are getting “free stuff” and want to get more “free stuff” from
the government. Ann Coulter said the election result meant the country has
reached a tipping point in which there are more takers than makers. Sean
Hannity and Herman Cain inferred that members of the New Black Panther Party
intimidated white voters in Pennsylvania, which explains how the President won
the state. When it was clear the
President won re-election The Donald (Donald Trump) lost
his mind on Twitter by advocating sedition. Trump’s rant was so disturbing
that NBC Nightly News anchor Brian
Williams tweeted “Donald Trump has driven well past the last exit to relevance
and veered into something more irresponsible.”
The musings of political prognosticators and pundits must
now be swallowed with a grain of salt unless they have some empirical data to
back up their assertions. But the data has to be unbiased (Rasmussen, Gallup,
Unskewed, etc., proved to be partial to Republicans) or they will be hacks
without credible facts. To their credit,
some commentators and serious journalist on the Right did eat crow by admitting
they were wrong and the statisticians were right.
I fully expect members of the “conservative entertainment
complex” to continue ignoring results of hard data unless it fits their agenda.
But I suspect from now on that fair-minded political analysts, reporters and
hopefully voters in both parties will place more faith in predictions from
neutral forecasters than relying on anecdotal evidence and “gut feelings”.
4) Gone are days in which a politician can use anti-gay
policies or the threat of a so-called “gay agenda” to boost the number of conservative
voters to win an election. Remember the 2004 Presidential election? To lift his Election Day odds
President George W. Bush ran on a platform calling for a constitutional
amendment barring gay marriage. Conservative
evangelicals flocked to the polls thanks in part to Bush’s stance and to a
number of state ballot measures against gay marriage. Those socially
conservative voters proved to be valuable in what turned out to be a very close
election against Senator John Kerry. What a difference eight years make. On November 6th we saw just how much of a difference.
The first
openly gay senator was elected. Before November 6th no state had
voted in favor of marriage equality. But on Election Day the tide changed when
three – count ‘em three - state ballot measures legalizing gay marriage passed.
Another ballot measure to add a gay
marriage ban to the state’s constitution failed. That’s represents a huge
cultural shift since 2004 when Republicans used gay marriage as a wedge issue. Each
year it seems more Americans are supporting marriage equality. Polls earlier
this year show slightly more than 50% of Americans support same-sex marriage. After President Obama ‘came out’ in support
for same-sex marriage in May the percentages bounded to around 54%. Even many Republicans
have come out in support of marriage equality. Steve Schmidt, Senator John McCain’s campaign
manager in 2008, recently said that he supports gay marriage because the
institution of marriage is a conservative value regardless if the couple is
heterosexual or gay.
When President Obama went on television to explain why he
supported marriage equality, many feared that the President might lose some support,
thus damaging his re-election chances. It was clear that like most thoughtful
Americans the President had evolved on the issue of gay marriage. (Then Senator
Obama did not support same-sex marriage when he ran for President in 2008. He
advocated civil unions instead.) There
is anecdotal evidence that the President did lose some votes. There is real
evidence that conservative evangelicals again voted Republican in record numbers.
But the numbers were inconsequential to the final election result.
Now that the President won re-election its quite possible
that he will have one, maybe two Supreme Court appointees over the next four
years. His Supreme Court appointments could tip the balance from a majority
conservative court to a more liberal or moderate court. This is important
because if the issue of gay marriage ever comes before a moderate or liberal
leaning court it is likely to view bans on gay marriage as un-Constitutional.
Of course all of this is speculation. It is possible the current high court
will hear a challenge to California’s Proposition 8 that bans gay marriage this
year with a ruling set for next summer. But the Court has not decided yet (as
of this writing) whether they will hear arguments. If the Court does hear the
case, I would expect the Obama Administration to submit a legal brief stating
its position as to why Proposition 8 should be ruled un-Constitutional.
Gay rights and marriage equality may not be the same
lightening rod it once was in 2004, but it still carries a few volts that can
the be difference in close local elections. For instance, the Minnesota ballot to add a
gay marriage ban to their constitution helped Michelle Bachmann get the
evangelical votes she needed to narrowly retain her seat in Congress.
I will
caution that I am not concluding that the fight for marriage equality is almost
over or that people have changed their views completely overnight. I’m just saying there is strong evidence
emerging from the 2012 ballot boxes that people are changing their opinion
about marriage equality. As I often say, the world is changing.
5) The Tea Party has a stranglehold on the Republican Party
and it’s choking the life out of them. The Tea Party is generating politicians
that think compromise is akin to treason.
Moderate Republicans are being run out of office either voluntarily or
being kicked out by Tea Party challengers. And make no mistake – Republicans
are running scared.
Tea Party stars such as Richard Murdoch, Todd Akin, Allen
West, Joe Walsh and a few others lost elections because they were so far
removed from the mainstream that they make the late President Ronald Reagan
look like a Johnson Liberal. The awful and offensive things that came out of
their mouths this election cycle were hard to believe. Rightfully so, most of
them lost rather badly. But the Tea Party has cast a shadow over the entire Republican
brand and if someone does not turn the light on Republicans will continue to
suffer beat downs at the ballot box.
These extremists strike fear in the political heart of
sitting Republicans in Congress and the Senate with characters like Grover
Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform. He bullied most Republicans in
the House and Senate to sign his no tax pledge that basically says under no
circumstances will they vote to raise taxes on anyone. Instead of pledging to
do what is best for the citizens, these scared Republicans are carrying out the
whims of control freaks. This culture of “no compromise” and the practice of “obstructionism” are straight from the Tea
Party cup. The result has been total gridlock in Washington. And the vice is
tightening and getting nastier each year.
Republicans who do not drink the “Tea” are threatened with
facing a Tea Party-backed candidate for what will turn out to be a bitter and
costly primary challenge. Tea Party radicals are running against unacceptable Republicans
in local primaries in order to further extend their influence in Washington. What
happens is the moderate Republican incumbent is defeated in the primary by the
Tea Party-supported candidate who then is placed on the ballot to contend for a
House or Senate seat. But many of these folks they are run are turning out to
be “loons and wackos” as one moderate Republican recently said. Many of these candidates
are so out of touch with how civil people think that even many rank-and-file
Republicans in Red States won’t vote for them. To illustrate this scenario lets
examine how the Tea Party deep-sixed a reliable Republican seat in Indiana formerly
held by the six-term Senator Dick Lugar.
Senator Lugar was a center-right Republican who learned long
ago that to get anything done in Washington you have to work across the aisle
and compromise with Democrats. He did not see Democrats or those who disagreed
with him as the enemy. The Tea Party targeted Lugar because in their eyes he
was too moderate. Their candidate, Indiana State Treasurer Richard Murdock,
shocked Lugar by soundly defeating him in the primaries for the right to run
against the Democratic challenger. Senator Lugar graciously accepted his
crushing defeat, but issued a warning about Far Right Republicans in
a statement released the day after his defeat.
Murdock was expected to cruise to a Senate victory on
November 6th against a little known Democrat who was underfunded and
was not really expected to win. In short, Murdock went on to be flattened by
his Democratic challenger after he made a shocking comment during a debate in
which he said that birth as a result of rape was what God intended to happen.
That comment sealed Murdock’s fate. The
district that Senator Lugar held in Republican hands for 36 years was handed
over to the Democrats for the next six years thanks to the Tea Party extremism
of Murdock.
Senate losses by Republicans over the last few election
cycles are due in part to Tea Party fanaticism. Let’s see how mainstream members
of the Republican Party deal with this bloodthirsty crowd going forward. If
they continue to paralyze reasonable Republicans then the party will continue
to take a thumping in local and national elections. The Republicans need people like Joe
Scarborough, Michael Steele, Dr. Condoleezza Rice and Megan McCain along with
other practical Republicans to put the Tea Party on ice and regain control of the
Republican brand.
6) The Republican Party’s obsession around the country with
women’s bodies certainly came back to haunt them. GOP Governors in states with
majority Republican legislators suddenly decided this year to attack abortion and
reproductive rights. But they did not stop there. A few Republicans made
national news after making horrifyingly ignorant comments about rape. This
angered even rank-and-file Republican women like President George W. Bush’s former aide Karen Hughes who wrote in Politico that,
“If another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a
horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue.”
Governor Romney said early in the campaign that he would
de-fund Planned Parenthood. Apparently that was a silent platform advanced by
the Republican Party. Mainly the men in these Republican-dominated state houses
decided the best way to be Pro Life is to stop giving money to Planned
Parenthood, as if all that group does is do assembly-line abortions. But
Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of health services for women in the
U.S. They do cancer screenings, HIV tests, provide contraception, and many
other services vital to women. They also serve men by screening for testicular
cancer and performing vasectomies. Yet the Republicans think Planned Parenthood
is a synonym for abortion. Only about 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services are
abortions. Planned Parenthood is
important to women and messing with funding for that organization is good way
to have women turn on you at the ballot box.
Republicans also attacked an Affordable Care Act provision
that states employer-provided health insurance must provide women with access
contraceptives. Many people can get with the ban on abortion rights, but when
men (mainly white men) go a step further and want to deny or limit women’s access
to contraception it is too much to take.
Even conservative women who abhor abortion know that the best way to
stop an abortion is to not have sex or if you do, use contraception. The
overwhelming majority of sexually active women regardless of political party use
some form of contraception in their lifetime. Making matters worse was the fact that
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa held a Congressional hearing about this
portion of the Act because the religious community balked at being forced to
provide contraception because it was against their beliefs. Once again the
Republicans decided that only men should testify and have an opinion about
contraception for women. When a young Georgetown Law School student named
Sandra Fluke attempted to testify at the first hearing that was all male, Congressman
Issa barred her. She was later granted an audience in Congress but was vilified
by one of the Right’s “conservative entertainers” Rush Limbaugh. He called her
a slut and a prostitute among other things. This sparked widespread outrage by
not only women but by men, especially ones with daughters. Limbaugh managed to
do what no other politician could do – he brought the Democrats and Republicans
together to denounce his comments. Governor Romney dodged questions about this
incident by only saying that he would not have used in that tone. (One of the
highlights of this fiasco for me was seeing the feisty Congresswoman Carolyn
Maloney talk about the
hearing on MSBNC's Politics
Nation hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton.)
Women did not forget who was trying to make decisions about
their bodies and access contraception. Women across the nation noted the
bullying and swung their support behind President Obama and Democrats. I think
this swing by women to the Democrats back in February doomed Romney for the
Fall. Essentially Governor Romney was never able to close that gender gap.
In response to the Republican’s “War on Women”, females hit
the polls to support President Obama in greater numbers than the men who voted
for Governor Romney. In fact, if it were not for the President winning the
women’s vote, particularly in swing states, then Governor Romney would have won
the Presidency. Looking deeper at the
numbers, its reported that single women voted for the President at a 67% clip.
That is 2/3rds of all single women who voted.
Women voters also made a difference in many House and Senate elections. Clearly,
the nationwide attack on women’s reproductive rights hurt the Republicans. The
issue with Sandra turned out not to be a Fluke after all.
Also, maybe by accident or circumstance, women won more
elections than ever this year. There will be 20 female Senators beginning in
2013, the highest in U.S. history. There
will also be a number of new women in Congress. This seems to be the year of
the woman, at least in politics.
7) President Obama’s re-election means that The Affordable
Care Act, a.k.a., Obamacare, will not be repealed and will become the law of
the land. Now that the law is safe from being gutted by the Republicans, the
United States is catching up with the rest of the First World in guaranteeing
that most of its citizens will have access to healthcare coverage.
It has been reported that American’s desire to repeal
Obamacare is now at an all time low, probably due in part to the result of the
President’s re-election. Even Florida Governor Rick Scott has shifted his
stance on implementing Obamacare. Governor Scott has long been one of the most
vocal opponents of the Affordable Care Act. Now since there is virtually no
chance of the law being repealed states will now have to shift their focus from
fighting the law to how to make it work for its citizens. Usually once a major social safety net is
implemented the American people grow to like it and want to keep it.
8) The best political gift the Republicans gave the
Democrats was their renewed efforts at voter suppression. Its no coincidence
that states run by Republican Governors with majority Republican legislatures created
laws that would effectively suppress the minority and the youth vote. Their
justification for new legislation was that widespread voter
fraud is occurring and it must be stopped to protect the integrity of elections.
When asked for proof of rampant voter fraud state officials could never offer any.
Alleged voter fraud conspiracies were nothing more than a lie
conceived to suppress the very voters who were key to President Obama’s victory
in 2008. If the percentage of minority
and youth votes could be slashed by just a few small points then Governor
Romney would likely stand a better chance at winning states like Pennsylvania,
Florida, and Ohio. The goal was never to crackdown on voter fraud, it was to
discourage Obama voters from showing up at the polls on November 6th.
Some laws like the shamelessly biased Pennsylvania law
required voters to have a specific type ID or they would be denied voting
privileges. The Pennsylvania State
Supreme court barred its implementation until after the 2012 election to make
sure the citizens had time to get the required ID to vote. In Ohio the
Secretary of State became known nationwide for his attempt to end early voting in
three days running up to the election, probably in an attempt to sabotage the
Souls to the Polls tradition in the Black church. Souls to the Polls was
created by Black churches to increase voter participation by African Americans.
Souls to the Polls traditionally takes place the weekend before Election Day. The
state of Ohio suddenly had a problem with early voting occurring the weekend
before Election Day, so officials tried to end the practice. Thankfully the
U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Secretary of State’s attempt to limit access to early
voting. In Florida, the Governor reduced early voting by cutting the number of
days available to vote in half. That did not stop Souls to the Polls from
happening in Florida; they just did it weeks earlier. Other activities by
Florida Republicans include shortening the hours of early voting, changing the
laws to control how groups carry out voter registration, and fewer precincts in
large voter districts. Thanks in part to the Governor slashing early voting
opportunities the state of Florida had another voting debacle that should
embarrass every citizen in that state. Voters – Democrats, Republicans and
Independents – all suffered hours long waits to vote. Some people were still in
line to vote even after the Presidential Election was decided. These shenanigans
caused the state of Florida to delay final vote tallies till six days after the
election. Despite these diabolical attempts to suppress votes the President won
all three states anyway.
Attempts by the Right to limit their right to vote lit a
fire under young voters, as well as under African American, Hispanic and Asian
voters in a way that President Obama and any of his surrogates probably never
could. (See how voter ID laws affect
Latinos.) People of color and young voters recognized
that the new obstacles to voting were really schemes designed to discourage
their participation in the electorate. The Republicans tried to make sure that
the 2012 minority and youth electorate did not mirror the one from 2008. It worked. The combined percentage of minority
and youth voters turned out to be higher
than it was in 2008. In Ohio alone African American turnout increased 33% over
2008. That surge proved to be essential in the President winning Ohio. The
souls really did go to the polls.
One of my fears, however, is a repeat of 2010. There was a
20% drop-off in voter participation across the board during the mid-term
elections. This resulted in Republicans seizing control of the Congress. If the
drop-off had been limited to 10-15% the Republicans may not have earned the
power of the gavel in Congress.
I don’t doubt that the racist outbursts seen at Tea Party
rallies and the brazen disrespect that whites have shown over the years toward
President Obama (like shouting at him during the State of the Union address)
riled people of color who may have felt personally insulted by their shameless
bigotry. The racism displayed by the
Right probably re-doubled minority’s resolve to “punch it” to the polls.
Thank you, Republicans. What the GOP meant for evil, the
voters turned it into good.
9) Team
Obama radically changed how
Presidential campaigns are run. Gone are the days of campaign managers who use
expert guesses, “gut feelings” and unproven gimmicks to make decisions about ad
buys, and candidate messaging, and get-the-vote-out operations. President Obama,
David Axelrod, Jim Messina and David Plouffe assembled a team of statisticians
and mathematicians and behavioral psychologists
armed with the latest academic research ready to be put to use in a winning
campaign.
Large pools of data courtesy of the census bureau and various
surveys are mined to create voter profiles that are useful in deciding what
methods to use to earn their vote. Information such as what issues are
important to you, what TV shows you watch, your buying habits, where you surf
on the ‘net, how many friends you have on Facebook, and other variables were
gathered to craft outreach strategies. ( Watch the Frontline report on how registered voters are profiled in the digital age.) There are even reports that Team Obama knew
which celebrities would appeal to certain voters in different parts of the
country. This bit of information was used to solicit funds and to encourage
people to vote for the President. Further,
using social media, email, text messaging and Internet marketing to reach
voters are tactics that were unheard of ten years ago. As a matter of fact, the Obama campaign assembled some of the best minds who were from Twitter, Google, and Facebook to create the campaign's in-house software.
The importance of field offices and a well-organized ground
game proved to be a game changer for the Obama campaign. Romney supporters
ridiculed the Obama campaign’s large number of field offices in each state. But
what they didn’t understand is that the offices served as a base of operation
for local citizens to connect with folks in their own community. This tactic was
intended have a “neighbor” influence another “neighbor” to vote for President
Obama and to raise the likelihood that the voter actually goes to the polls. Relationships
build trust, trust results in votes. Part
of the reason the Republicans lost the presidential race is because they did
not have the same comprehensive campaign operation as Team Obama.
I suspect that President Obama was more amenable to using university
academics to consult with their campaign because he was once a college
professor himself. University academics tend to rigorously vet empirical data
before they publish their findings in academic journals or write books.
Conversely, Governor Romney, and generally those on the Right, shun university academics
because they tend to be more Left-leaning or liberal than they are. College
professors are often viewed with disdain or mistrust by the Right, so they are
reluctant to either hire or accept consultation from academics because of their
supposed bias. Naturally, people want to go where they are wanted, where their
research is valued and where they have the opportunity to transfer their
research from the Ivory Tower to the concrete jungle. The Left is benefiting
from this desire. The Right is suffering because of it.
10) Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West will now have another four
years to cling to their grudges against President Obama. Smiley and West have
been fuming for more than four years over perceived slights by President Obama.
Smiley has never forgiven then-Senator Obama for not making an appearance at
his State of the Black Union Conference in 2008. Instead, the Senator, who was
campaigning to secure the Democratic nomination, offered to send his wife
Michelle. Smiley declined her
appearance. He was further irritated by
the fact that Senator Hillary Clinton, who was also campaigning for the
Democratic nomination, did make an appearance at his conference. He went on to
endorse Senator Clinton as his choice for Democratic nominee for President. Since
then Tavis Smiley has castigated President Obama, going so far as to publish a
book about holding politicians accountable. On the cover of the book is a mosaic
of President Barack Obama. He released the book less than 30 days after Obama
took the Oath of Office. Its odd that Smiley suddenly decided to publish a book
telling Black people to hold politicians accountable when he didn’t write one urging
the same thing during the 16 years that Presidents Bill Clinton and George W.
Bush were in office.
Dr. West is angry because he felt the President snubbed him
during the 2008 Inauguration. While busy on the campaign trail Senator Obama
stopped returning West’s frequent phone calls. But the straw that broke the
camel’s back was when Dr. West went to Washington, DC for the Inauguration.
West was livid that the hotel worker who carried his luggage up to West’s room
had a ticket to the Inauguration and yet West did not. Since then he has been
attacking the President at every turn because he feels betrayed by him. So
West’s battle with the President is more personal than ideological. His
frequent hyperbole-laced name-calling
aimed at the President is thinly veiled by pseudo-intellectual jargon
claiming to be policy critiques.
So Smiley and West have teamed up to subtlety urge black
folks and other people of color to abandon the President. Turnout by African Americans and Latinos on
November 6th proved their campaign against the President
backfired. One can expect that if they
keep up their attacks they will be further cast into the sea of irrelevancy in
African American activist and intellectual circles.
I can’t wind this post up without final observations on
David Frum’s criticism of what he calls members of the “conservative
entertainment complex” who have extraordinary influence over the Republican
Party. Really they are hacks, frauds and snake-oil salespeople who earn their
living by ignoring facts and creating their own “alternate realities”. Even worse is that anyone on the Right who
challenges their “alternate reality” or does not follow directions will be
castigated on the airways (see former RNC Chair Michael Steele who crossed Rush
Limbaugh).
Spinmeisters on FOX News Channel and talk radio have “sold”
their audiences a narrative rooted in a culture of lies and deceit that the
rank-and–file Republicans swallow as the truth. They’ve built their careers on
saying the most outrageously unsubstantiated things that a large chunk of
America wants to hear. Things like President Obama is a Muslim; or that he is a
goose-stepping socialist; or that he is not a true American; or that Liberals
are bent on ruining the country and so on. No wonder they essentially ignored
or publicly derided every poll or forecast that said President Obama is likely
to win. Facts are inconvenient. Facts get in the way of ratings. Unfortunately,
for Governor Mitt Romney, he had to pander to that slice of the Party to get
the nomination (and money). By the time the General Election rolled around it
was far too late for Romney to stiff-arm that crowd and be himself – a moderate
Republican who was handily elected in a liberal state. Once again, the odds were not in his favor.
Finally, President Obama has a shot at greatness. Often when
a President is elected to a second term their greatest achievements are
realized mainly because they no longer have to run for re-election everyday of
their Presidency. Presidents are free to make the tough choices and set their
own agenda without worrying about paying a price at the polls down the road. The
President has some big challenges but he also has some big ideas. And he also
has some big adversaries.
Clearly President Obama is interested in being one of the
great American Presidents. Hosting dinners with at the White House with some of
America’s most renowned historians and biographers like Douglas Brinkley, H.W.
Brands, and Doris Kearns Goodwin indicates a desire to learn from past
Presidential administrations while carving out his own legacy.
I hope that President Obama’s legacy includes working to
lift more people out of poverty. I was greatly troubled that both candidates
ignored the poor. During this entire election season neither Governor Romney or
President Obama mentioned policies that address America’s poor. Unfortunately
the poor are an afterthought in America. Strategies to assistance the
middle-class were practically all the candidates talked about. Even Senate and Congressional
candidates seemed to forget that America still has a poverty problem. All the
campaign speeches were about improving the middle-class as if boosting their
economic fortunes somehow makes it better for those who are not in the
middle-class. In a sense, it is a form of dribble down (as opposed to trickle
down) economics. Part of the greatness of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(greatly admired by President Obama) and President Lyndon B. Johnson was their
policy initiatives aimed to help the poor. I think President Barack Obama could
do well to follow their example over the next four years.
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