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President Barack Hussein Obama made
history for the second time on November 6, 2012. The first time, in
2008, he became the first non-white to win the American Presidency.
But that was mostly due to the appalling situation that George W.
Bush had created – endless war and economic catastrophe – and the
eagerness of the American public to change course. This time Obama
won election on his own, by putting together the first winning
coalition built upon the tremendous diversity of American society.
Romney won the white vote. But Obama won the vote of blacks,
hispanics, women, gays and the young, and of big city/suburban
dwellers and the “47%” that Romney mistakenly wrote off early in
the campaign.
Clearly, many Obama supporters were
also white, just not the older, rural, male and richer ones that were
the core of Romney's support. Obama won the election because he
gained the votes of the diverse, urban America of the 21st Century.
He did so because he is clearly in tune with that diversity and
because of a sophisticated (and unfortunately expensive) political
machine that was able to target and enthuse the many and varied
slices of our social, economic, cultural and regional complexity.
The Republican Party clearly
understands none of this. Instead of seeking to embrace this
emergent diversity, the Republicans made war on it by targeting the
black man elected in 2008. Unspoken racial fears still present in much of
that section of the white electorate that remains solidly Republican
allowed the small government, no-tax-increase fundamentalists to
appear to have a solid political base. The rich, white
“one-per-centers” making up the Republican elite of office
holders and donors sought to build upon this by frightening just
enough additional voters to unseat the President they sought to
demonize with charges he would make the US into “Greece.” It
turned out that this was not enough to win over all those real people
with real concerns and hopes not addressed in such simple terms.
The Republicans instead should have
sought to seize at least some of the new ground before it became more
solidified for the Democrats. In a way, they were fortunate to have
finally settled on Mitt Romney – former governor of Massachusetts,
a northeastern “blue” state – as their candidate. After his
nomination, the ever-mutable Romney could have used his fabled
“etch-a-sketch” to begin redefining his party in the more
moderate direction it needs to go to remain competitive. Romney is a
rich man but Americans don't automatically hold that against anyone.
Rich Republicans used to remember that the economic system that made
them rich and keeps them rich doesn't, by itself, ensure the fairness
and equal opportunity that alone produces majority support for that
system. The Republicans needed to find an updated version of someone
like Nelson Rockefeller, a true moderate who could project compassion
and understanding of the social compact necessary to sustain
democracy and yet also be rich.
Romney could have become the new and
improved Rockefeller. This would have meant resisting currents that
have been building since Goldwater and that eventually undid the
moderate wing of the Republican party. Difficult, but a start could
have been made, especially running with the incumbent facing strong
economic headwinds. Instead, Romney chose to play it safe and
instead solidify his (white) base by choosing to move to the extreme
right and to pick as his running mate a poster boy for Republican
fundamentalism. If Romney had moved earlier and more consistently
toward the center, the Republican base would have had nowhere else to
go. It still really, really wanted to get rid of Obama. Other
Republican leaders could have fallen in line in the interest of
winning this and future elections. But none of this happened.
Romney's lack of political courage and his choice to run to his
“base” led to his defeat and that of the party that jumped with
him into the demographic wilderness.
Shed no tears for the Republicans.
They have sought since 2008 to lie, bully and scare their way back
into power without offering anything beyond fears about debt and big
government. Twenty-First Century America is too large, diverse and
complex to be governed with a simple no-new-taxes, small government
catechism.
President Obama and the Democrats don't
have have all the answers either and did not offer any new, big
vision in this campaign. But Obama seems to understand that while
government cannot and should not try to do everything, it must be a
major part of the effort to manage our complexity. Government must
help keep our society within the bounds of fairness and justice by
providing our free-market economy the political structure (and
infrastructure) necessary to empower it to continue to fuel our
American way of life for all Americans.
