2012 was a big election, there is no doubt, America made a BIG decision as to what general direction it is now going politically. Both major parties laid out pretty clear visions, (called ideology or values or philosophy), as to what they see as the proper role of government. The voters said that they wanted more involvement by way of deciding who is elected. Voters affirmed ObamaCare, (many want even more), they agreed to greater regulation of business, specifically continued implementation of Dodd-Frank on Wall Street and credit protection, and they agreed to increased that taxes at least on the wealthy.
Elections have Consequences as was often repeated during the Bush-Cheney years when coincidentally the Republicans enjoyed their legislative majorities, but so does changing demographics. (BTW, have you noticed that Democrats have won popular vote polarities in five of the last six presidential contests, if that is the case how could America be center-right?)
Demographically the political class is beside itself how the growing Hispanic vote moved decidedly towards Obama at a rate now greater than 7 of 10 voters. Combined President Obama received 44% of his vote total from person's of color, gathering 94% of African-Americans, 73% of Asian-Americans and 71% of Hispanics vote. Comparably speaking Mitt Romney's campaign received just 12% of its vote's total from persons of color—meaning his voter face was 88% White Americans! Socially this is a damning statistic, any wonder the stage crafter's at the RNC placed Guam and American Samoa delegations in the camera's eye? But on political reality terms it is now a loser formula in that the White voter percentage of has dropped to 72% from 2008's 74%. Looking back the trend has been precipitous to say the least, where from the year 2000 it has fallen from 81% and you have to go back to the Reagan era to see when White voters percentage was stable at 89%. Elections have consequences and in this view as America demographically evolves towards the day when no racial-ethnic group will possess a majority the electorate has deemed the Republicans the party of white people.
This demographic voting preference carried through in every age and gender category as well. Women voted for Obama 55% to 44% but just White women it was 42% to 56% for Obama. And even though Obama carried voting ages under 40 years old through strong margins of 60% among 18-to-29 year old's and 55% for those 30-to-39 years of age, when you looked at the details, Obama's share of White voters in those age groups fell back to 44% in the youth vote and 38% among the 30-Somethings'. Yet in each demographic category subdivided by gender be it ethnicity or age or both, Obama carried higher margins among women roughly averaging 10% greater shares than with men in those categories.
My wife asked what does all this mean, as she said Obama won? It means that the Democratic Party's electorate reflects what California, New York, Florida and urban areas like the Tri-County around Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Houston, DC corridor, Detroit metro, Cleveland, Raleigh, Atlanta, Denver metro, Seattle, and what Phoenix is realizing---diverse minority majorities. It is growing and the Republican electorate is not.
Elections have consequences and from the Democratic perspective as of the current status, 121 out of 200 (six seats are still have elections in doubt though it appears the Dem's have the advantage at least in five of them), are either women or have ethnic-racial minorities, other words known as now a minority-majority category. All told there are at least 57 female Democrats in the House, and the Republicans will have at least 20 women, , all told 77 women, 18% of the House will use the women's facilities. If there is going to be a bi-partisan breakthrough look for it to come from this area of the Capitol.
In the more venerable U.S. Senate, women now comprise 20 seats, 16 are Democratic out of the entire 53, while 4 of 45 Republican, (30% to 8%). Latino's also increased their presence in the U.S. Congress now numbering 28 House Members, 23 Democratic and 5 Republican, though the Republicans have two Latino Senators to one Democrat. African American House Members number 42, forty-one are Democratic. Do not underestimate the effect that having more women and ethnic-racial minorities in Congress or the fact that the Democrats have many of their leadership positions including Nancy Pelosi, James Clyborn and Xavier Beccera are occupied by minority status persons. Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz both ran their caucus election campaigns. I have to say that anything resembling trickle down is dead.
So you have to ask a deeper question; was this election about race or gender or about something else? A running joke near the end of the campaign was, “'You know the rape-candidate-guy', (as a Party you have a big problem when the response is), 'Which one?'” Elections have consequences. I think both the ethnic-racial and gender issues directly related to the consequences but not what people think they were. Remember what everyone in the political class agreed before the election was about before the rest of the nation started to take notice that this election was always about, THE ECONOMY STUPID, but also everything else too. When you understand that women still make 71% of the wages than men performing the same work, this could be as important as the stupidity related to absolutism about rape and abortion where ignorant male candidates seem to express such ignorance, and superficially try to retract it, somewhat.
That takes us to the other related demographic category as to how votes went, according to income. The Middle classes are defined by household income, generally accepted to be between $30,000 and $199,000, in three groups. Most single women, African-American, and Hispanic households all fall in one of the two groups; lower income (under $30,000 and not middle class) or the lower Middle Class (AKA working class) as in $30,000 to $49,999. Not coincidentally these two financial demographic groups voted for Obama in overwhelming numbers, 63% and 57% respectively. Middle income households ($50,000-$99,999) split to Romney 52-46% but when you add up these three groups together you find that it represented 76% of Obama's entire vote, 39% of the entire vote, where he carried 54% to 45%. Think about this, this is a demographic had nothing to do with gender (rape/abortion) or age (youth vote) or ethnic-racial based (Black & Latino's), just income. This knife seemed to cut deeper and cleaner. Now when I included the upper middle class group ($100,000-$199,000) Obama still carried the entire Middle Classes with 52% of the vote, oh it is almost the popular vote margin.
So was it race? Gender? Or income? Elections have consequences where one could say almost similarly that it was the gender and income gap or was it the shrinking demographic of White voters, and correspondingly, the growing power of ethnic-racial voters.
I think David Frum, former David Frum, former speech writer for President George W. Bush and now a contributing editor of TIME,who identified both the changing demographics and statement about middle class best:
“It is not about the Latino vote only, it is about the middle class. In the 1970's the Republican Party developed a series of powerful answers to serious problems of low productivity and high inflation and the Soviet challenge and now, in the 21st Century all of those problems have been solved, and we have new problems of inequality, of healthcare costs and the Chinese challenge, they [Republican Party] offered the same ideas that worked on different problems. It is like your doctor giving a patient an antibiotic who has depression.”
Washington Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers said
"I don't think it's about the Republican Party needing to become more moderate; I really believe it's the Republican Party becoming more modern,"
A modernization problem brings us back to basic issues of inequality in the context of tactical social wedge issues used by Republicans that predominated the political discourse for a generation. Were these issues actually masking racism owing to the closeted belief of White Supremacy? (CODE ALERT) Could it also be a male dominated society was being challenged as well?
Elections have consequences.
Bill O'Reilly stated on election night:
“It’s not a traditional America anymore.[...] Whereby twenty years ago President Obama would be roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. The voters, many of them, feel like the economic system is stacked against them.[...] You’re going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel they are entitled to things.“
What was that America? Did it ever really exist or did it exist in the virtual worlds of a few minds? I know that America the nostalgic American Mitt Romney conjured up in his convention speech included African-Americans but not at the seat of power, especially not at the highest seat now repeated and validated as a re-elected president.
I know that single women were at America's table of power, but it was more like John Adams' wife, behind her man and not openly pushing back an obvious chauvinist conservative right-winger, like how Senator-elect Tammy Baldwin did to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). In an AP interview on Nov 7th, Johnson said he hoped he would be able to work with Baldwin in the Senate -- as soon as he explained the "facts" of the budget to her.
"Hopefully I can sit down and lay out for her my best understanding of the federal budget because they're simply the facts," he said. "Hopefully she'll agree with what the facts are and work toward common sense solutions."
Baldwin has served in Congress since 1999 while Johnson was elected in 2011, Baldwin
responded this way on Friday to the Huffington Post.
"I was a double major in college in mathematics and political science, and I served for six years on the House Budget Committee in my first six years in the House, and I am very confident that when proposals come before the U.S. Senate, I will be able to evaluate them as to how they benefit or harm middle-class Wisconsinites. A yardstick of 'does it create jobs,' 'does it lower the deficit' and 'does it help grow the middle class' is an important one. I'm quite confident that I have those abilities," she added.
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I also know that 28 Latinos are not going to sit around and not have immigration reform be ignored once again. I also know that conservatives will have to sit next to seven openly gay or lesbian or even bisexuals at the table of power. The Dem's have six House members and one Senator. What will Texas, Florida and Arizona's political landscape look like with 20,000,000 new Latino voters registering in the next decade?
Elections have consequences. Traditionalists, those who call themselves conservatives is it really that these are closet or not admitting white supremacists? Isn't that what really the Tea Party has been all about when you get under the hood. The Right is now realizing that the realities of these new demographics means, that there is a real power shift going on and away from White-Male-only, which also includes heterosexuals-only and Christians-only as well. O'Reilly continued the other day denying the obvious as they did after 2008.
[H]e believes traditional America can make a comeback, but 'it will take a very special person to make that happen.' [...] That's the key. Because many in the media would have us believe that liberal ideology was confirmed by this election. It was not. However... however, secularism is certainly eroding traditional power. No question about it. Those Americans who attend religious services at least once a week voted for Romney 59-39, the problem is church going is on the decline in this country. [...]By the way, Mitt Romney didn't even try to marginalize secularism. He basically ignored it. A mistake because President Obama is the poster guy for the secular progressive movement. The key question going forward is the SP Movement good for Americans no matter what their ethnicity or economic condition and the answer is no. [...] If Mitt Romney spelled that out, what the secular progressive movement is really all about in strong vivid terms and how President Obama enables that, Romney would not have lost 71 percent of the Hispanic vote. I can tell you. I believe the majority of Americans can be persuaded that the far left is a dangerous outfit bent on destroying traditional America and replacing it with a social free fire zone that drives dependency and poverty.
(Hey Bill O and Bill O staff,
I know you lurk here so if by chance you read this, I got a coded message for you, we can read demographics data better than your side so I am going to parse your final logic regarding religious voting demographic to tell you that this is a realignment that does not include Rich, White-Males who use Christianity as a crutch.)
Elections have consequences.
Obama received 65% of his votes from people who went to church once a month or less, that demographic made up 57% of the entire electorate. These people are NOT predisposed to faith based reasoning. America is a secular nation, only those who are faith based don't believe so. So it was not Mitt Romney as you have now turned your blame on, it was all of the above; the issues, the demographics, the economics, the inequality, the mess that the previous alignment led and made by the White-Male power elite that is being disposed by the voters.
As O'Reilly illustrates following the election the Right is visibly shaken. They are upset because they have to work now with people at the power table whom they personally loathe, see Johnson condescending response to Baldwin election above. And further whom the Right in the name of White Males have for generations have sought to destroy—and worse, now for them to survive at the table will have to welcome few into their partisan tent if they give themselves any hope on surviving. How do you authentically reach out to people whom you fostered genuine hate towards? Elections have consequences and this one as paired with 2008 is as big as 1932 & 1936 and 1980 & 1984, it changed who is now seated at the power table and that is called a REALIGNMENT.