In a speech to the National Urban League in 1864, while running for re-election, then-President Abraham Lincoln urged his supporters to not swap horses midstream. This odd analogy refers to a situation in which people would cross streams on horseback, which was a common, yet perilous task.
Crossing a stream isn’t easy, and neither is saving a country on the brink of economic collapse. In both cases there are ups and downs and uncertain times, but the only way to prosper is to stay on your horse and move forward.
Yesterday, the American people decided not to swap horses. President Obama won re-election against Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
While not all of the votes are tallied at this time, it seems that the President won 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206, with the President winning every single battleground state with the exception of North Carolina, which few expected him to win.
Republicans are certainly asking themselves how this could be possible. After all, no President with the exception of Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, in the midst of a Great Depression, has ever been re-elected with unemployment this high, not to mention with the nation being this divided on party lines. When it comes to the economy, all of the cards were in place for a Republican takeover.
So why didn’t that happen?
There are several reasons.
First and foremost is the extreme nature of today’s Republican party. While there are many Democrats who could accurately be called very liberal (the President is not one of them, on most issues), the Republican party has become a party in which the term “moderate” is a negative word. Look no further than Mitt Romney’s flip-flops. Once a man who championed the idea of universal healthcare as governor of Massachusetts, and even after, he was forced by his party to abandon his cause of affordable access to healthcare. Furthermore, he once considered himself pro-choice and called himself better than Ted Kennedy for gay rights. That man, often referred to as ‘Moderate Mitt,’ could not be found during this campaign season.
Much to the chagrin of many Independents, Romney eschewed the moderate label, while moving to the right in order to satisfy the base.
Republicans also have a problem when it comes to the female vote. Exit polls from election day indicate that President Obama won the female vote by 12 percentage points. While it is a normal occurrence for women to lean left, very few expected the gap to be this wide in 2012, more than offsetting the slight advantage Republicans had with men. It is not entirely too surprising, however. Democrats this year have courted the female vote like never before, with bringing up the ideas of choice and, possibly more importantly, equal pay.
Romney, in one of the more baffling moments of the campaign, would not express support for equal pay for equal work during the town hall debate on October 16. When asked what he would do on the issue, Romney instead talked about giving women flexible hours at work, so that they can get home to cook for their families.
Furthermore, Republicans cannot be viable when it comes to the female vote, while the extreme wings of the party continue to show a lack of care to women who are raped. It’s that simple.
Finally, Republicans have a ‘Latino problem.’
For the first time in American history, Latinos made up ten percent of the popular vote, and are now the third largest ethnic group electorally. Most unsettling for Republicans is the fact that Latinos are a large voting bloc in the three key battleground states of Florida, Colorado, and Nevada. With Florida being the third largest state in the electoral college (tied with New York at 29 votes), Republicans must win that state in order to remain competitive. That did not happen this year, nor in 2008, as seventy percent of Latinos voted for Obama last night. This landslide win of the Latino vote is at least partially a result of policy positions engendered by the Republican party and Mitt Romney himself, including his pronouncement of a “self-deportation” policy toward undocumented immigrants. This policy, according to Romney, would, in short, make life so miserable for Latinos, by way of depriving them of basic rights, that they would flee back to their home countries.
Yet, the extremism of the Republican party is not the only reason that the President won re-election. Some credit must also be given to the President himself. While the Republican party has become exclusive, the Democratic party, with the President at the head, has become the party of inclusiveness. Whether through the aforementioned courting of women and Latinos, or through the acceptance of gays and lesbians, Democrats have welcomed millions of Americans into their party’s open arms. Barring any unforeseen shakeups, Democrats have created a lasting coalition that will be relevant for decades to come.
Additionally, despite its shortcomings, the American economy is on an uptick, albeit slow. The private sector hasn’t seen a net job loss in nearly three years, consumer confidence is up, the housing market is on the rebound, and the Dow has been consistently high.
Moody’s Analytics, an economic research firm in New York City, predicts that 12 million jobs will be created in the next four years, with a pace of 250,000 job creations a month. This could do a great deal in bringing up many Americans from poverty, and strengthening the middle class. Typically, the stronger the middle class, the stronger the nation.
Foreign policy, while not as big of an issue to most Americans as in elections past, was still a major plus for President Obama in this year’s election. From the ending of the War in Iraq, to the present drawdown of the War in Afghanistan that will be over in 2014, Obama’s wartime presidency has been largely successful, with relatively few hiccups compared to the last administration.
His participation in the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, with little cost to the American taxpayer and no loss of American life, was seen as a model for how American foreign policy can be carried out in the future. Possibly most of all, his order to kill Osama Bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind responsible more than any other man for killing 3,000 American citizens on September 11, 2001, was certain the most successful covert mission in quite some time.
Furthering this point of Obama’s leadership was Mitt Romney’s earlier refusal to commit to killing Bin Laden under similar circumstances.
For all of these reasons, and certainly many more, the American people kept President Obama in the White House for a second term. The road will still be tough, Washington will still be highly partisan, and there will surely be more points of contention, partisan rhetoric, and certainly gridlock. Yet, President Obama has been given a chance to continue his agenda for moving America into a more accepting nation, a more caring nation, and a more secure nation.
With even the slightest bit of cooperation from Republicans, we can begin to tackle the problems of the present and the future, ensuring our nation’s children that they will inherit a country that still is a beacon of light to the rest of the world.
