Four More Years

It was a great election night in this corner. Not only was President Obama re-elected, but Democrats actually made pickups in the Senate, perhaps the craziest member of Congress, (I know, the bar is high) Allen West, was defeated, and marriage equality seems to have won all four ballot instances.

I spent election night working for the AP, fielding votes from town clerks in Massachusetts, who called in the vote results. We were not allowed to openly root for one side or the other, but TVs were set up so we could watch the returns. As Romney racked up an early lead, the fellow next to me, who calls himself a libertarian, seemed to see that as a good sign for the Republican. But all of the early states called were not surprises. It was only when Obama was declared a winner in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that I started to feel better.

When Ohio was called, and bedlam erupted in Chicago, I had to quietly tell my colleague that Obama won, which shut him up. But I was supremely confident. I'd been reading the blogs of Nate Silver and Sam Wang, who both had Obama at over at a ninety percent chance of winning. The networks, all of them, kept calling it a toss-up, which was nuts. Yes, the popular vote was close, but you have to look at the state polls, which Silver and Wang were doing. Romney had a difficult electoral path to the presidency, and it turned out he lost every swing state but one (North Carolina, which was never considered to be likely for Obama). If Florida holds for Obama, Silver and Wang will be fifty-for-fifty in their predictions (plus D.C.).

So what does this election say? I think we can compare it to the race in '04. A vulnerable candidate was re-elected due mostly to the weakness of the challenger. Except to the most die-hards, Romney was never an inspirational candidate--he only represented the un-Obama, and that wasn't enough. He had no strong principles, and very little charisma. Obama remained personally popular, more empathetic (the hurricane helped) and things do seem to be getting better. Still, I think a stronger Republican candidate would have won. Who would that be? You got me. Of the original slate of candidates, perhaps only John Huntsman, the most reasonable of the lot, might have given Obama a real struggle.

What will the Republican party need to do? In watching some of the Shiva on Fox News, they blame Romney, but they also are tsking over the changing demographic of America. Bill O'Reilly laments that traditional America is gone, and what he means is that the white majority is gone. Boo hoo! So Republicans will have to reach out to Latinos and blacks and Asians. They can try by putting someone like Marco Rubio on the ticket (it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Rubio had been chosen instead of Paul Ryan as Veep), or maybe Republicans need to try to reach out to the concerns of Latinos and blacks. Nominating a starched white plutocrat like Romney, who was never able to convince the poor and middle-class that he cared about them, was fatal.

I think it's also interesting that all the candidates who made gaffes about rape--notably Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock of Indiana--went down to defeat. Clearly Republicans are behind the curve on women's issues. Few people, it seems, have the stomach to insist that women should be forced to bear their rapist's babies.

Already the networks are talking about 2016. The usual suspects on the Democratic side are Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, and a number of women senators, notably Elizabeth Warren, just elected as senator of Massachusetts (yeah!). On the Republican side we have Rubio, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, and Rand Paul, picking up his father's support. It's a long way to go--Republicans tend to go with the next in line, and that might be Paul Ryan. Democrats are more susceptible to go with someone we may not even be talking about now.

For now, Obama faces a difficult four years. Second terms are tough for presidents--just ask Bill Clinton. Times are still tough, but I'm a lot more optimistic given the result of Tuesday's vote.