Why Obama won

Monday, November 12, 2012

— President Barack Obama won last week’s election in the most obvious sense because he was able to gradually regain most of the ground he lost in the first presidential debate. Mitt Romney had made himself a plausible alternative with his showing, but just about everything thereafter worked to blunt “Mittmentum” and shift the edge back to Obama.

First came the jobs report for September indicating a drop in the unemployment rate below 8 percent. After three and a half years above it, the 8 percent level had acquired powerful symbolic value, and the drop therefore reinforced Obama’s message that things were finally getting better.

It also came at the perfect time because it undercut the central message Romney had conveyed in his winning debate performance just a few days earlier.

Second, and largely neglected in campaign analyses, was the sharp drop in gas prices over the last month. Gas prices were inching toward the politically dangerous $4 per-gallon price in late summer, but began to go steadily back down, to just above $3 for much of the nation by Election Day.

This was an underrated factor in Obama’s victory because it further strengthened impressions of economic improvement and because fluctuations in his approval ratings over the past four years have shown a powerful correlation with increases/ decreases in such prices.

Finally, and also at just the right moment for Obama’s campaign, came Hurricane Sandy.

Obama was able to exploit the advantages of incumbency by putting on the bomber jacket, touring the devastation, and giving the obligatory speeches. He looked “presidential,” in a way Romney had and he hadn’t since October 3rd. Along these lines, some exit-poll reports indicated that up to 40 percent of voters considered Obama’s response to the hurricane to be an important factor in their decisions, and that the vast majority of them went on to vote for him (or, as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews put it, “I’m so glad we had that storm . . .”).

There were, of course, still other factors that played a role, including Obama’s ability to stonewall and dissemble about Libya in a way that kicked the can of Benghazi past November 6th, with obligatory mainstream media assist.

Indeed, the reluctance of most media outlets to pursue that story in any significant way (one which almost certainly would have blown up to the point of destroying any Republican incumbent) probably ended up hurting the Republicans in an additional sense, in that it distracted attention during the crucial final weeks of the campaign away from Romney’s message on the economy, growth and jobs.

So Obama got lucky, to the point of having perhaps the best last month-campaign closing of any candidate in memory, with everything breaking neatly his way and with just the right timing.

Still, all of this (unemployment figures, gas prices, Sandy, Benghazi, etc.) represents only the minutiae of the campaign and fails to get at the broader “structural” explanations for the Republican debacle. The Republicans lost more Tuesday, and in a way that shocked the party faithful, than any conventional analysis of the ebb and flow of the campaign can alone account for.

Where a deeper explanation can probably be found is in the prediction made by Ruy Teixeira and John Judis nearly a decade ago in their influential book The Emerging Democratic Majority-that as white voters continue to decline as a percentage of the population, blacks, Hispanics and single women become our electoral future.

Put differently, Republican defeat was (again) largely a consequence of turnout, with exit polls showing that Democrats enjoyed a turnout advantage in 2012 (+6 percent) roughly comparable to that in 2008. In other words, 2008 wasn’t an exception to the rule; as many of us assumed; rather it permanently changed the “ground game” of American politics and produced a dominant coalition for the Democratic Party that is likely to endure for years to come. The Tea Party-inspired “shellacking” that Republicans gave Democrats in 2010 now appears to be the aberration.

What this also means is that a Republican Party whose leadership consists mostly of older white males, and which is increasingly dependent upon white male votes, has progressively declining prospects. Until it finds a way to appeal to blacks, Hispanics and single women, the GOP is going to have to get used to election results like Tuesday’s.

In all, then, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the Republican loss was the way in which it so stunned the party rank and file as to leave them perplexed by the actions of their countrymen. One suspects that many Republicans on Wednesday morning sympathized with the Romney supporter who felt she had “lost touch with what the identity of America is right now . . .” to the point of having to wonder “. . . who my fellow citizens are.”

Thus, one gets the sense that most Republicans, somewhat to their credit, still think you win elections by appealing to hardworking married folks who have kids to raise and mortgages out in the suburbs to pay off. But last week proved that this isn’t the America of Dwight Eisenhower or Leave it to Beaver anymore.

The Democrats long ago figured that out; Republicans lost because they don’t want to believe it.

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial, Pages 13 on 11/12/2012