President Obama's Six Keys to Victory

Inside the multicultural, center-left coalition that ensured four more years

By Tim Dickinson
Progressive America Rising via Rolling Stone

President Barack Obama has won re-election – his lease on the White House renewed by a multicultural, center-left coalition that ought to give GOP consultants nightmares, producing an electoral college landslide that surprised everyone not named Nate Silver. (The Five Thirty Eight guru's reputation is as golden this morning as SuperPAC kingpin Karl Rove's is tarnished.)

With four more years, Obama can now cement his historic legacy, fully implementing Obamacare, the most ambitious renegotiation of the American social contract since the 1960s. The president broke ground on his second term with an electrifying acceptance speech that recalled the best of 2008's candidate Obama, and 2004's convention Obama. He hit again on the touchstone of his presidency, his belief "that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people."

This race wasn't close. Obama secured a convincing win of the popular vote. And from his 2008 state-by-state haul, he surrendered only Indiana (which was never truly in play) and North Carolina (a surprise squeaker) to Mitt Romney. Every other swing state – Nevada, Colorado, Iowa, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and New Hampshire – tipped again into Obama's victory column. When counting is complete, Florida, too, appears poised to go blue.

In the end, Obama's dedicated campaign volunteers proved themselves worth far more than anything the GOP's moneymen could buy. Voters rebuked the mendacious Romney and his villainous platform to lard the rich and destroy the social safety net.

How did team Obama defeat Romney? Here, the six keys to victory:

1) The Turnout Machine I reported on Obama's re-vamped get-out-the-vote machine this spring, previewing the technology that would enable the campaign to network its GOTV operations far beyond campaign offices and into the garages and dorm rooms of its supporters.

At the time, campaign manager Jim Messina and field director Jeremy Bird were making an early, unprecedented investment in the ground game – and that bet paid off like gangbusters. In a contest that couldn't compare to 2008's electricity, the 2012 Obama campaign reproduced – through brute force, dedication and will – a turnout in the swing states that in some cases bested the campaign's remarkable performance of four years ago. Yes, Obama lost North Carolina. But his final tally there was actually 35,000 votes greater than when he won the state in 2008.

2) Younger Voters Sorry, Boomer Nation: President Obama owes his second term to Generation Y. Voters under 30 turned out in greater numbers than senior citizens and broke for Obama over Romney 60-37. Gen X wasn't too shabby, either: Voters 30 to 44 gave Obama a 7 point edge. (Romney, on the other hand, won convincingly among voters 45 and older.) The numbers in Florida are particularly striking. According to exit polling, the Obama campaign not only improved turnout among the under-30 set there, it ran up the margin, too: Young Floridians broke 67-31 for Obama, better than the 61-37 margin over McCain in 2008.

3) The Latino Vote With 4 million more registered voters in 2012 than in 2008, Latinos accounted for one in every ten voters in 2012, and these voters broke for Obama by an epic 71-27 split nationally. That is almost exactly the margin Bill Clinton hung on Bob Dole in 1996, when there were only half as many Hispanic votes. Messina told me earlier in the campaign that he was "obsessed" with the Latino vote, and that reproducing Clinton's numbers against Romney this year would mean Game Over for the Republican. He was absolutely right – particularly in Colorado, where the split was even more lopsided: 75-23, up from 61-38.

4) African-Americans The historic turnout of African-Americans from 2008 held steady in 2012 at 13 percent of the electorate, nationwide. And the Obama campaign actually managed to increase black turnout in pivotal states like Virginia, where one in five voters was African American. Romney earned only 5 percent of that vote, compared to the 8 percent won by John McCain.

5) Ohio Working Stiffs Call it the "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" factor. In Ohio, where the auto industry employs one in eight workers, Obama actually gained ground – 2 points – among high-school educated voters without college degrees, about a quarter of the state's electorate. Compare that to Wisconsin, where Obama lost 6 points among this cohort. Or North Carolina, where the dropoff was 11 points.

6) All the Single Ladies Romney was haunted by a yawning gender gap, particularly among unmarried women, who accounted for 23 percent of voters (up three points from 2008). While Romney himself took awkward pains to reach out to female voters, he was yoked to his running mate's moves to redefine rape, and to the GOP's broader agenda to limit access to not only abortion but birth control. Obama took this voting bloc by a 67-31 margin, nationally, and by nearly identical tallies in Ohio and Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin. The intersection of race and gender was especially powerful for the president in states like North Carolina, where black women accounted for 14 percent of the electorate – and 99 out of 100 voted to defeat Mitt Romney.

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Beginning Again: Assessing Obama's Victory

By Tom Hayden
Progressive America Rising

Nov 6, 2012 - President Barack Obama addresses a crowd of supporters in Chicago, IL, following his reelection on November 6, 2012.President Barack Obama’s triumph was, in the first place, one of brilliant organizational execution built on the changing demographics of America. Obama never lost sight of his community organizing lessons, nor the harder ones of Chicago politics. His volunteers, looking at fewer numbers and less enthusiasm, turned themselves into a relentless machine. David Axelrod and David Plouffe kept the focus of resources on the battleground states while the Republicans, torn by a long primary war, were left behind vying for crucial electoral votes.

Obama’s triumph was also one for the rising political bloc of Latinos and their younger generation of Dreamers, who asserted themselves as an indispensible force in coalition politics; a breakthrough for the long-isolated LGBT community; for a resurgent feminist community called back into action; and above all, for a unified African-American community absolutely determined to be at their president’s back.

Obama’s triumph demonstrated, too, a popular mandate for a positive vision of government’s role in protecting workers, consumers and the disadvantaged against the storms of an economy controlled by the One Percent, as embodied in the election of Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. The decision to attack Romney on Bain Capital and Wall Street issues was a conscious choice by the Obama team to go populist – against the counsel of such key Democrats as Bill Clinton, Cory Booker and numerous others.

Less clearly but still compellingly, it was a mandate to continue advancing toward a green economy. The political aftershock of the super-storm is only beginning to be felt, but it must lead to Green Keynesianism.

The causes of marriage equality and marijuana legalization have advanced through popular initiatives.

Sadly, many angry white radical critics of Obama may have isolated themselves even further from this enthusiastic popular upsurge. Reading their intense blogging and listening to their rage on Pacifica, one almost had the sense that they there were disappointed in Obama’s success. A quick survey indicates that third party candidates failed to make any difference whatsoever in the elections in battleground states.

The problem of their increased isolation is unfortunate because an organized, popular, effective radical presence is needed within mainstream civic society. Those progressives entirely devoted to Obama will be hard-pressed to separate themselves from the president in the wake of this exhausting and emotional campaign. But crunch time is at hand for the AFL-CIO, the NAACP and the liberal coalition as the “fiscal cliff” approaches.

How will Obama balance his progressive electoral mandate in negotiations with the Republicans, which begin almost immediately? Who will take up the battle against Citizens United and forcefully point out the connection between the super-storm and the full-scale arrival of global warming? Can Occupy Wall Street – or any radical organizers – recover from their apparent disdain for strategies which involve electoral politics and pressure? Is there anyone within the political establishment – Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders? To forge an inside-outside alliance with the party of the streets? What issues will MSNBC choose to take up?

On foreign policy, the crisis over Iran intensifies almost daily. Obama has few options unless there is an overwhelming popular opposition to the nearing war. American troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan, but their path is a rocky and ragged one. The drone wars drone on. Latin America remains devastated by the Drug War, NAFTA-style economics, and toxic residues of the Cold War. There are few in Congress to take up these burning issues. But diplomatic, political and economic solutions are needed more than ever to the crises of the Long War, drone and cyber-warfare, and the violence of the Middle East and Arab Spring.

For more details, please see also by Tom Hayden, “Obama’s Legacy Is Our Leverage.” Article originally appeared on tomhayden.com (http://tomhayden.com/). See website for complete article licensing information.

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