President Barack Obama overcame a disappointingly slow economic recovery and a massive advertising onslaught to win a second term Tuesday night, forging a coalition of women, minorities and young people that reflects the changing political face of America.
The outcome was surprisingly swift. Major television networks called the race against Republican Mitt Romney less than 20 minutes after the polls closed on the West Coast, as a succession of battleground states tipped the president’s way.
About 90 minutes later, the former Massachusetts governor offered his concession in a private phone conversation with the president.
Claiming victory before a roaring, flag-waving crowd in his hometown of Chicago, Obama summoned a bit of the poetry that was absent throughout much of the acrid campaign. He told supporters that the country was moving forward “because of you.”
“You reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope,” he said, “the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an America family, and we rise or fall together as one nation and one people.”
Romney, standing alone on a flag-bedecked stage in Boston, spoke before Obama.
“This is a time of great challenge for America,” he told disconsolate supporters, his voice worn and expression taut, “and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”
For all the agitation and unhappiness with Washington, a constant of public opinion this election season, the federal government in January will look much as it does today. In the fight for Congress, Republicans held onto the House majority they captured in 2010 and Democrats beat back long odds to keep control of the U.S. Senate.
For Obama, 51, winning a second term proved far more difficult than his barrier-breaking romp four years ago to become the nation’s first black president. His re-election drive bore only a faint resemblance to the uplift and aspiration of 2008. He did, however, manage to replicate his overwhelming support among blacks and Latinos _ the fastest-growing part of the electorate _ and again won among women.
New campaign laws produced a flood of more than $2.5 billion in spending, much of it from outside groups. There were more than 1 million TV ads, many of them scathingly negative. Even so, the political map ended up looking much as it did in 2008. The only states that flipped to Romney, pending final results, were North Carolina and Indiana, both icing on Obama’s first victory.
While Florida, one of the most fiercely contested states _ was too close to call Tuesday, a victory there would only pad Obama’s margin well past the 270 electoral votes needed to claim the White House. Of the handful of states in which the most fierce combat took place, Romney claimed only one, North Carolina, while Obama carried Ohio, Virginia, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and Colorado.
The president did make history of a fashion Tuesday, becoming the first incumbent since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win a second term with unemployment above 7.4 percent. At 7.8 percent, the jobless rate stands a tick up from when Obama took office amid the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Not surprisingly, exit polls showed the touch-and-go economy was the overriding concerns of voters, cited by 6 in 10 of those surveyed. Fewer than half, four in 10, believed the economy was getting better. But Obama was insulated to a great extent: just about half laid the blame for the struggling economy on his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
There were big stakes in the election: the fate of tax cuts scheduled to lapse at year’s end, the likelihood of one or more appointments to the Supreme Court and, more fundamentally, two visions for the proper role of government, embodied by competing plans for health care and the future of Medicare and Medicaid.
Obama vowed to let the tax cuts expire. Romney promised to repeal Obama’s signature health care law as his first order of business.
But a smallness suffused much of the campaign, which was fought on the relatively narrow ground of 10 or so states.
The president’s strategists filleted the electorate to pursue narrow slices with special appeals: immigration reform to spur Latino turnout, cheaper student loans to entice young people to the polls, legal abortion and access to contraception to persuade women to support the president’s re-election.
Romney hewed to a similar strategy, spending months reaching out to the Republican Party’s conservative base to heal the wounds of a bitter primary season, before finally pivoting to appeal to the middle of the electorate in the last weeks of the contest.
By Mark Z. Barabak
Distributed by MCT Information Services
Los Angeles Times
