MikeLigalig.com

Obama won re-election because he represents the America that is

JOHN IBBITSON
The Globe and Mail
Wednesday, Nov. 07 2012

Why, despite a struggling economy, shuddering deficits, a paralyzed Congress and a deeply cleaved nation, did Barack Obama win a second term as President of the United States? Because he represents the America that is, the America that is becoming, not the fading America of the Republican Party.

A country that is increasingly brown rather than white, a country where women and the young are finally finding their full political voice, a frightened country that looks to government to protect them from the worst, trusted Mr. Obama and did not trust Mitt Romney.

We should not overstate that victory. This divided nation has rarely been so divided: white versus brown, rural versus urban, North versus South – each, it seems, against the other.



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“If the Republican Party cannot win in this environment,” the conservative columnist George Will declared in September, “ it has to get out of politics and find another business.” Time to go looking for a new line of work?

Yet America gave the Democratic candidate only a qualified endorsement: a wafer-thin win in the popular vote, though a more substantial win in the electoral college. At least two states – Indiana and North Carolina – that Mr. Obama won in 2008 Mr. Romney took from him in 2012.

Nonetheless, the thin veneer of moderates in key states who decide elections went with what they knew. They might not have liked the President’s health-care reforms, they certainly didn’t like the years of unemployment above 8 per cent, and they would dearly love to see the value of their house to start rising again.



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But that narrow band of the uncommitted grudgingly accepted that much of the bad economic news was out of the President’s hands. They held a Republican-controlled House of Representatives equally responsible for the gridlock in Washington. They did not favour cutting taxes as a recipe for reducing trillion-dollar deficits.

So enough white men joined with women of all hues, with Latinos and African Americans and Asians, with millennials and auto-industry workers – who accept that Washington saved their jobs when it saved their industry – and all the others who cast a Democratic ballot to give Mr. Obama a clear, if modest, victory.

To be more precise: Edison Research reported early Wednesday that young voters (ages 18-29) cast 19 per cent of the ballots in this election, one percentage point more than in 2008, and voted Democrat over Republican 60 per cent to 36 per cent.


an obama victory fundraising guest: cameron diaz

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It projected that there was a 52 per cent spread between the Democrats and the Republicans among Latinos. Better than 90 per cent of the African American vote was pro-Obama. Women voted substantially in favour of Democrats.

So much for the Republicans’ much vaunted enthusiasm gap between their supporters and the President’s.

This is fact: Unless the Republican Party attracts more women, more of the young and more Hispanics – which means unless they change their ways and their world view – their electoral future is bleak. This was true four years ago. It is even more true today.


another obama victory fundraising guest: gwyneth paltrow

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For Americans, public health care reform is now guaranteed. Fundamental immigration reform will be a second-term priority.

Those who support a woman’s right to choose, some limitation on the right to bear arms and other core liberal values can be reassured that a Democrat will nominate Supreme Court judges for the next four years.

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For Canadians, the co-operative and even collaborative relationship between Mr. Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper will remain intact, even as Canada pushes for a reversal of Mr. Obama’s decision to prohibit the Keystone XL pipeline that would bring oil south from the oil sands.

For the world, a multilateralist president who prefers to co-operate rather than confront will seek to make the world a less incendiary place.



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