Ah, the good old days. How Republicans long for the America of yesteryear then Romney would have won the election. As President Obama pointed out at the last debate:
But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.
If only Romney could have imported the voting policies of the 1840s when only white men could vote before the
15th Amendment, he would have won in a landslide as
BuzzFeed shows us in a handy map:
President Barack Obama has been elected twice by a coalition that reflects the diversity of America. Republicans have struggled to win with ever-higher percentages of the shrinking share of the population that is white men — "a Mad Men party in a Modern Family world," in the words of one strategist.
But at America's founding, only white men could vote, and the franchise has only slowly expanded to include people of color, women, and — during the Vietnam War — people under 21. These maps show how American politics would have looked in that undemocratic past.
What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage
In fact, if you click the link and review the maps for different periods of time, you will discover that Mitt Romney would also have won if we had been voting in the period of our history from 1870 to 1920 (only men could vote), as well as from 1920 to 1963 (only white men and women) before the 24th Amendment. Romney would have lost in 1970 and after, even before the legal voting age was lowered to 18 in 1971.
But was it really the demographics that caused Romney to lose the election? Not according to Joel Benenson who served as President Obama’s chief pollster during the 2008 and 2012 campaigns. According to Benenson, the election results had a lot more to do with values than demographics.
The president’s victory was a triumph of vision, not of demographics. He won because he articulated a set of values that define an America that the majority of us wish to live in: A nation that makes the investments we need to strengthen and grow the middle class. A nation with a fair tax system, and affordable and excellent education for all its citizens. A nation that believes that we’re most prosperous when we recognize that we are all in it together.
(snip)
Moreover, Mr. Obama’s strength on the economy was not about “empathy,” as many experts asserted. Rather, for average working-class and middle-class Americans who have believed for nearly a decade that the economic system in America had fallen out of balance for people like them, the president’s personal story and policies engendered trust because they connected with voters’ lives, aspirations, and beliefs about what it would take to create the future they wanted. That trust was the central economic test in this election.
That is why, despite the credit given to Mr. Romney for “understanding” the economy — a phrasing that spoke to a technical understanding — Mr. Obama was always significantly more trusted on qualities that matter to working Americans. In fact, independent voters in our survey, by 54 to 40, said it was more important for a president to have “the willingness to fight for middle-class families” rather than a “technical understanding of the economy.”
Values, Not Demographics, Won the Election
I posted this article in comments I've made over the last few days, but I think it was high time that it received a diary of it's own because for all the discussion going on about why Romney lost. The fact is that President Obama ran a 21st Century campaign and Mitt Romney ran a 20th Century campaign. It turns out the a majority of Americans like to live in the present and do not long to live in the past.
I was never convinced that Romney's “technical understanding of the economy” was a great calling card based on our history. Another article I was fond of quoting pointed out that our previous businessmen presidents did not have a great economic track record:
By contrast, two 20th century businessmen — George W. Bush, whose sweetheart deal with the Texas Rangers made him a multimillionaire, and Herbert Hoover, who came by his mining fortune honestly — were ranked among the worst presidents ever by the same historians. Bush left the country in a sea of debt and an economic crisis rivaled only by the one that engulfed Hoover.
The Wrong Résumé
I can't help but wonder how much larger President Obama's margin of victory would have been if we had been able to put a stop to the GOP's voter suppression efforts. That's why I've started a new group,
Do You Know Why We Vote On Tuesday? to work towards fixing our broken election system. Please consider joining. More about the group in
this diary and
this diary.