Why Obama won

By Deauwand Myers

Math. At its coldest and most distilled truth, President Barack Obama defeated Governor Mitt Romney by sheer numbers.

But elections are also about fate, policies, personalities and psychology.

Obama had substantial headwinds going into his re-election: a stagnant economy, a loud and animated group of people who dislike him on a visceral (and illogical) level, fabulously wealthy Republican donors bent on his political destruction, and a perceived diminishment of American power and prestige.

But in his greatest enemy, the Republican Party, he also found his trump card. The Islamophobic, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynist, racist, and otherwise troglodytic elements of the GOP prevailed in carrying Romney and his party into areas of such ideological extremes that the American electorate found handing over the White House (and the Senate) to the GOP an unattractive, if not frightening, proposition.

And as political scientists and others examine the post-mortem of the Romney campaign, surely they will find this truth, already well-documented in both liberal and conservative circles: demographics. Younger people, women, and racial minorities all heavily favored the President. Historically, they represented a smaller portion of the electorate, and further, were unreliable when it came time to vote. At least in presidential elections, this is rapidly changing. These populations, particularly women, Latinos, and Asians, are an ascendant group in both number and political power.

My maternal grandfather, a seminarian, pastor, and on weekends, a farmer, often said: “Deauwand, we reap what we sow.” The GOP has prospered in past generations from a solidifying coalition of disaffected Democrats, the white working classes, and Christian fundamentalists. This coalition is diminishing in number, political power, and is not nearly as politically homogenous as it was during the vaunted Reagan era, and the sad days of the Nixon administration not long before it.

White working class voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Virginia were not buying what Romney and the GOP were selling, certainly not in the numbers needed to unseat President Obama.

Further, the tone and substance of the GOP and Romney, from increasingly draconian legislation encroaching on women’s reproductive rights, to a hostility towards Latinos, to stereotyping the poor and working classes as lazy and vapid, to the tired tropes of race and prejudice foisted upon President Obama, were all seen for what they were: unenlightened, cruel, silly, dangerous and most importantly, unrelated and unproductive toward better economic development and upward socioeconomic mobility.

The problem is this: If, at the core of the Republican Party and conservative ideology, is a new kind of old racism, working in conjunction with the view that women are secondary in worth and ability, that the poor desire and deserve poverty, that the sick who cannot afford healthcare should suffer, that gay people are second-class citizens, that an unbridled, unregulated, free market system should be fetishized and romanticized as the cure for all social ills, then there simply is no way to re-calibrate these beliefs with the Democratic Party’s ascendant coalition. Women, young people, and racial minorities will never find these tenants, or more palatable reiterations of them, as acceptable forms of government or policy.

In my viewing of the post-election analysis, some conservatives have said that new faces, i.e., black and brown faces, and female faces, who subscribe to the aforementioned conservative principles, will help to woo the ascendant groups of people Obama and the Democrats won with.

This cynical ploy is insulting and doomed to failure. Black and brown and female bodies can parrot anti-poor, racist, sexist policies and those policies still be seen for what they are: wrong. In truth, these conservative problems fundamentally define the Republican Party. They do not believe that poverty is a sin of the state. They do believe that the wealthy and powerful should be rewarded with more wealth and power. They believe that women’s bodies, once impregnated, should become property of the state. They do not believe in any meaningful safety net for the sick and needy.

It very well may be that the new demographics of the American electorate spell the steady and inexorable decline of the Republican Party and a two-party system as we have known it for many generations. And frankly, not soon enough.

The writer holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory and is currently an English professor outside of Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.