Editorial
Editorial Epilogue – Why Obama Won Nov. 2012
Mitt Romney was never, really, supposed to be their nominee. In fact, because he had, as governor of Massachusetts, passed universal healthcare – the template used to create the Obamacare they loathed – his fellow Republicans had taken Romney through the ringer and meat grinder of their primary season.
Eventually though, while Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, alongside the motley crew assembled as good enough to beat that “socialist, Muslim” former community organizer, eventually melted either under the heat of media scrutiny or the rigmarole of the primary season, Romney only emerged victor because he was better known than all the others since he came second to John McCain in 2008, and also because he had more money.
Nonetheless, that they even considered Rick Perry, Herman Cain and the feisty former Speaker Newt Gingrich in spite of their un – electability is indicative of how desperate conservatives were to get rid of Obama.
In the throes of an apoplectic Tea Party Movement – an ‘anger’ that successfully led to the Republicans winning the House of Representatives in the 2010 Midterm Elections – conservatives even fell victim to the charming misapprehension that Sarah Palin, Orly Taitz, Donald Trump and also Dinesh D’Souza were right about Obama.
D’Souza’s documentary ‘2016: Obama’s America’ aptly described as ‘surreal’, had by November 2012, reaped more than US$33 million in the U.S. alone – making it one of the highest grossing documentaries of all time! Taitz and Trump became representative of those who did not believe that Obama was American and Sarah Palin was Sarah Palin.
Vindication for Sanguine Predictions
In November 2012, these tenets, ostensibly, came back to bite their proverbial behinds, proving us right.
After 5 editorials predicting an Obama victory, making the case for Obama’s presidency and eventually endorsing the President on November 1, we had no doubt in calling the election for Obama; a whole hour before most outlets based on the results in Florida. But even more importantly, although most of what we predicted came to pass, we completely underestimated how surgical Obama campaign was in mobilizing Americans to the polls.
