To my American readers, I am British and therefore have no vote so this is my European take on things.
The US 2012 election for the President, the House of
Representatives, and about a third of the Senate took place on 6th November -
while the world watched with bated breath.... (ITV is a major English TV
channel).
The electioneering has been going on almost continuously since the last election four years ago.
In the last year it has become extremely bitter and partisan with up to $6
BILLION being spent, much of it on TV advertising. There are limits on what the
parties and candidates can spend although these are several orders of magnitude
larger than those in the UK. But in addition private entities can spend
unlimited amounts, which they have done. The end result has been a blizzard of TV
ads particularly in those states regarded as being 'swing' states, notably Ohio,
Virginia, Florida but also Iowa, Colorado, Nevada, Indiana and North Carolina
(Obama took them all except the last two). Almost without exception these
adverts have been negative in nature. Neither candidate for president has said
anything about what THEY will do only the bad things if the other one gets in
power. This has been supplemented by thousands of calls, texts and tweets such
that everyone we met no longer answers their calls and mutes the television most
of the time. The people are tired of it.
The last two years of government with a Democratic president
and Senate and a Republican House has resulted in almost nothing being done, with
brinkmanship over the debt ceiling and refusal to agree budgets and
appointments. The government has become non functional. President Obama has done
some things by direct action such as implementing the DREAM act which gives the
children of illegal immigrants a route to citizenship. He has also made several
appointments while the House was in recess. This has only inflamed the
Republicans. They have their own problems with the rise of a right wing element
known as the Tea Party which has forced the candidates for Congress to sign up to not permitting tax rises under ANY circumstances. They have
also ousted many moderate incumbents so forcing the Republican party to the
right.
 | The Democratic incumbent President Obama is standing for a
second term amidst high unemployment and a low approval rating. The Republican
challenger Mitt Romney has fought off many others to become the nominee but he
is not universally popular, a
multimillionaire venture capitalist and a Mormon (not deemed a proper religion
by the evangelical Christians), he is deemed not conservative enough. |
 |
The country is very evenly divided and extremely partisan, a
view being reinforced by the media especially Fox News and MSNBC. These channels
are very highly regarded despite being extremely partisan and blatantly incorrect on occasions. Both
are so popular because they say what their audiences want to hear.
This is to my mind potentially very dangerous. There are mutterings in the UK
about bias in our media but frankly we don't have any idea what bias is in
comparison.
The main issues are:
The economy - with 8 million unemployed, 15 million
underemployed and growth of GDP at under 2%, it is not in good shape but is
doing better than most of Europe. Mitt Romney argues that as a businessman he
knows what is needed and he will create 12 million jobs because he knows how to
do it. The little which comes out suggests that this will be done by reducing
taxes for the wealthy job creators and eliminating regulation mainly that
related to employment law and the environment. Specifics are non-existent! This is President Obama's weak
point since he can only argue that it is getting better, reinforced by Bill
Clinton's famous quote at the Democratic convention - 'Even I could not have fixed it in four years'.
The balance of payments and the debt - these have now reached
monumental proportions, beyond what most of us can comprehend. The US is now
spending $500 billion/year more than its income and the debt is over $16
trillion. The problem comes in the analysis of this which is clouded by the
partisan reasoning. The government needs more income and/or less expenditure.
Half the shortfall is currently down to the tax cuts implemented under President
Bush. The rest is split between increased social security payments because of the
unemployment, healthcare costs rising at 3 times inflation and military spending. But there are other interpretations and thus
solutions, the principle idea being that the US can grow its way out the problem
- by exporting to Europe - I think not.
Healthcare - President Obama introduced Obamacare which come
into operation over the next few years. It has been and still is being fought
every inch of the way. Mitt Romney said he would repeal it on his first day in
office. Many
Republican states have not done anything towards implementing it assuming it will disappear. It has been
fought all the way to the Supreme Court who upheld it. It is seen as a monster
which will drastically increase costs. The principle provisions it tries to
implement are that healthcare should be available to all and there should not be
up to 40 million Americans not covered (depending upon who you believe).
However most Republicans accept the need for society to cover those not able to
cover themselves, the only debate is about those who choose not to. The
spiralling cost is a different issue and both sides accept that the cost needs
to be sustainable. US healthcare costs are about double those anywhere else in
the world.
Immigration - particularly that of Hispanics, is a very contentious
issue. Romney's assertion that they should self deport themselves probably lost
him the Hispanic vote (a rapidly increasing element of American society). In
practice the influx of Asians is probably now larger. Finding a route to
citizenship for these people is a high priority for both parties.
Abortion - which causes the most intense reactions in people
on both sides played a small but significant role. Two Republican senators made crass
statements (by their own party's admission) and it cost them their seats and
possibly their party the election since women in particular took exception to
their statements and, by association, their party's policies.
The election itself was not a pretty one and not a good
example of democracy in action. Many states tried to introduce laws on voter id
as thinly disguised attempts to disenfranchise opposing groups. Some states
manipulated constituency boundaries to achieve similar results.
 |
CNN had the Empire State Building lit up to show the current position of
each candidate in the count as the results came in. |
On the night the count went very smoothly and very much
more quickly than I expected. This was mainly due to the use of electronic voting
machines which facilitated a very rapid count despite the huge size of some of
the ballots. In some states the ballot paper was twelve pages long with
elections for president, senators, representatives, state senators and
representatives and then propositions on all sorts of subjects including
legalising marijuana for recreational use (it was passed).
CNN had a map of the states which broke down into counties
and they plotted events as they were reported. The graphics were impressive but
the logistics even more so. They used this to forecast results often with only
a small percentage of the count in. Fox News had something similar, as did NBC.
There were pundits and party advisors on hand to comment, much as in an English
election. The states finish voting in time zones although people already in the queues
are permitted to vote. Some of these were as much as six hours later by which
time it was all over.
Early states went to Romney who was ahead in both the popular
vote and in the electoral college vote until California was annnounced. The
president is elected by an electoral college of 540 votes allocated by population in
each state on a winner take all basis (mostly). Thus California has 55 votes
(Democrat) and Alaska has 3 (Republican) The first signs of problems were when
North Carolina was shown as too close to call. It had been seen as solid
Republican and subsequently went that way - just! When Florida was forecast
Democrat the fat was really in the fire and it was all over when Ohio also went
Democrat. Note that these were predictions by the networks with maybe only 50%
votes counted. But they are not often wrong. Florida wasn't finally announced
until 3 days later but by then it didn't matter.
| The moment when it was
all announced by the networks. |  |
The big problem is that each party had its favoured polls and
just decried any poll which did not agree with their wish. So an independent
pollster Nate Silver on his 538 blog for the NY Times was thought to be barmy -
but he got the closest by a mile. The Romney camp basically believed its own
propaganda. The Obama camp actually had a superb machine of volunteers getting
out the vote and their feedback was working so they remained quietly confident.
The popular vote was split 50%-49% in Obama's favour but the
electoral college was 332 to 208 - a huge mandate or none depending on your
viewpoint. It is certainly a divided nation. Hispanics, blacks, Asians, women
and the young
voted democrat 75-25. Only older white males voted Republican in large numbers.
There were some fun moments such as the presenter who went to
the toilet and announced on her return that a state was too close to call, not realising that
her colleagues had called it in her absence. The funniest was when Carl Rove who
was on Fox News said they were wrong when Fox itself had announced that Ohio had
gone to Obama. Carl Rove headed up one of the largest SuperPacs and had spent
over $300 million in anti Obama ads on TV. The final irony was that Romney had
not prepared a concession speech because he was so certain he did not need one.
But my favourite for the whole election was the 4 year old who, when shown a
picture of Barack Obama and asked if he knew what the man did, replied 'He
approves this message!' Oh the power of advertising.
 |
When it was all over the building went all blue for the Democrats.. |
The end result is a government which is basically unchanged.
The Republicans still control the House and the Democrats control the Senate
with a Democratic President. It is to be hoped that there is a little more
cooperation between them but the early signs and pronouncements do not bode
well. Four more years of conflict would not be good for America nor for the
world.
So where does this leave the Republican party? Well, at the
moment, one week after the election, there are two camps. The first I term the
analysts. They read the data and realise that the demographics of the population
are not in their favour. There are more minorities in America than there were in
2008 and there will be more still in 2016. By then several more states will be
predominantly Hispanic. There will be more young who tend to be Democrat and
fewer of the existing old white voters who vote Republican. So they need to appeal to the
young Hispanics by doing something about immigration reform and by choosing more
sympathetic candidates or even Hispanics. There are other aspects of social
conservatism which need to be addressed as well, such as getting politics out of
the bedroom with their attitudes on abortion and gay marriage.
In contrast the other wing of the party (predominant at the
moment) are the deniers. The problem was they didn't have a conservative-enough
candidate, they didn't get the core vote out, they must reinforce their principles, no
compromise etc. Next time round they won't be facing a black candidate, the best
they can hope for is a woman. At the moment the only thing going for them is a
wealth of good candidates in Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal and others. I
have yet to see the same on the Democrat side. At the moment there is Joe Biden
and Hilary and I don't fancy their chances against the young Turks. But if the
Republicans oppose everything as they have for the last two years then I think
the electorate will punish them, especially if America gets back
on its feet. |