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.
In contradistinction to the Romney campaign, Obama bet that despite all those things Republicans said about reduced passion for Obama, it was going to come down to their get out the vote [GOTV] effort while at the heart of Romney’s push was ‘the Rabid Obama Syndrome.’
Additionally, like we underestimated Obama’s mobilization, we did not believe that conservatives could be as blinded by their rage as they were this time around. In being so consumed with conservative memes, the Romney campaign and the GOP as a whole thought that the anti Obama passion amongst their partisans was felt across these United States.
They ignored mainstream polling and focused on those polls that showed them that their party was wining. Their points of consolation rested on models that told them that no other American president had won re-election with the unemployment rate higher than 7 percent.
Combined with their effective conservative talk radio, television and other media, it was almost inevitable that Obama would soundly lose the White Vote including those who were above 65. They also supposed that since enthusiasm for Obama had waned from his 2008 novelty, the plateau Obama had hit with women, those below 45 and also, amongst minorities like the African Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans would only get into the inevitable downward spiral.
The Unprepared Republicans
The Republicans could not have been caught more flatfooted last Tuesday night! Mitt Romney’s people had, in anticipation of his victory, gone ahead to put the Romney Presidency website up; Republican strategists led by Karl Rove, Bush II’s deputy chief of staff, could not believe that Obama was leading in Ohio converse to what their ‘figures’ showed.
Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan had been assured that they had the ever so important momentum over Obama – the same kind that had led Ronald Reagan to his 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter – was on their side. When Romney eventually conceded, both the Romney and Ryan spouses pitifully wept. Ann Romney looked haggard and every bit the senior citizen she really is when she came to join her husband post concession. Mrs. Ryan shamelessly wiped a tear from her face right there on that stage in Boston.
At the same time, while Romney’s concession speech was gracious and delivered in clear nonpartisan tones, it was evident that he had not prepared a speech about losing. He had expected to win and had, in pure bravado, let his people leak the rumor that he had not written a concession speech.
But let us put a few things into context: Romney won more white voters than any other Republican had won since 1988. He also managed to sweep Indiana and North Carolina back to the Republican camp – states that Obama had won in 2008. Seniors, most white men and married women went for Romney, and that was it for the Republicans.
How They Lost Their Way
On the other hand, the GOP lost Senate seats in Indiana, Missouri, Massachusetts, North Dakota, Nebraska and Maine.
Except for Massachusetts and Maine, Republican losses in the other states were simply self-imposed. In fact, a case can be made that both Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock lost their Senate bids because Almond & Verba were right: The American citizen is more on the “downward flow” side of politics and not as squarely Republican or Democratic as their partisans would like to think. Exit polls and the overall results on Election Day showed that Americans do not appreciate those who talk of rape, gay rights issues and even marijuana in extreme terms.
In the same vein, we are now certain that Mitt Romney lost the states of Florida, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa and Pennsylvania simply because each of these states’ Republican governors tried to disenfranchise voters to benefit the GOP. Florida’s Governor, Rick Scott, reduced the number of early voting days from 14 days to 8 in what is widely considered an attempt to prevent minorities from voting since Democrats were the kind to vote before so that they could work on Election Day.
This backfired as it led many African Americans and Latinos in Florida to turn up, brave the long lines and 10-page ballot paper to give Obama their vote. For the first time in more than 3 decades, Cuban Americans in Florida voted Democrat and it seems as though Mr. Romney’s primary season anti-immigrant rhetoric had come back to bite him. Obama received more than 70 percent of the Latino vote and also, 93 percent of the African American vote – almost as much as he received the first time around.
We could go on and on about where we were right and where Obama’s people go it right. But the crucial thing here is how wrong the Republicans were. They had put their blinders on and focused on what their own people – Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, the Weekly Standard and many others – were saying. They were, instead, indolent about mobilizing their own people and the more than 10 million Obama vote deficit over 2008 could have been the white voters Romney needed to make his requisite 61 percent majority for electoral success.
In summation, Romney ran a worse than lackadaisical campaign. On top of the aforementioned blinders and their self inflicted losses, an illustration of this incompetence rests on their Project Orca. What was supposed to be his secret weapon at the polls – one meant to let volunteers search for and mark off Romney supporters, and get those who had not voted to the booth – collapsed under a deluge of data simply because it had not been beta tested with real field information. In the end, their own software cost them thousands of votes and the actions and Obama’s victory left the Republicans doing the Coulda Woulda Shoulda.
For their part, conservative strategists argue that Romney did not respond to Obama’s preemptive attacks on Romney’s personality and ineptitude at governing ordinary people. They say that if Romney had only responded earlier and criticized Obama right back, maybe Romney would have won.
Obama the Boogeyman
But again, the Republicans seem to forget two simple things: First, after he won the primary, they, themselves, were still not really enamored by a man they considered a Massachusetts liberal, and they did not give him the money he needed to counter the very liquid Obama machine. Also, when Obama attacked Mitt Romney’s character, it was a result of the things Romney himself had said in the past. Yes – Obama’s people oftentimes exaggerated Romney’s awkwardness and his lack of a common man touch. Obama’s people played up their candidate’s likeability and in terms of a popularity contest, most voters still liked Obama as a person over Romney.
However, all that changed after the first presidential debate. Although he lied and prevaricated, Romney, as the calculating and strategic man he was turned out to be right. The 70 million Americans who saw the Republican nominee debate their first black president suddenly realized that Romney was plausible since he was very presidential. That debate alone erased Obama’s 6 month advantage and most people did not remember that he had changed his mind of countless things, that he had fired people each time his Bain Capital took over an industry, or that he had embarrassed himself on his first trip abroad as the Republican nominee.
In essence, though, the bounce that eluded Mitt Romney after the Republican National Convention and his ill-fated trip abroad was realized after the infamous October 3 debate performance. After that, the man had the momentum he needed. Conservative money followed him and while he had been trailing Obama in the polls, it seemed as though the independents and middle America awoke up to the Romney Revolution and to mittmentum!
Liberals immediately started their Chicken Little dance – predicting the end of days and liberals were despondent-galore! But even then, we predicted that Obama would come back swinging in the second and third debate – unlike Carter who could not redeem himself after his lackluster performance against Reagan since there had only been one debate a few days before that year’s November election.
The Heart of the Matter
In hindsight, we might as well admit that much of our sanguine prognostication was based on a combination of the electoral map, the national polls, an improving economy and most of all, hope that most Americans were more moderate than the conservatives presented them to be. Our hope was vindicated in the end because that’s how journalists and strategists really work. Just like anyone can sass out an off key sound, we saw how hollow Obama’s opponents were.
It was obvious that just like they manufactured the Tea Party Movement, the moneyed class had been successful at painting an Obama that did not exist. Now, they just to successfully run against him through playing on the fears of regular white folk; in hyperbole, nuance, dog whistles and downright obfuscation. Thank God that these powerful things did not work.
Dennis Matanda
Editor – editor@thehabarinetwork.com