Obama's Diverse Coalition The New America Flexes its Muscles
By <
http://www.spiegel.de/extra/0,1518,632139,00.html> Marc Pitzke in
Boston
11/08/2012
The election in 2008 provided but a fleeting glimpse of America's vast new
diversity. This year, it was impossible to ignore, with unprecedented
numbers of Hispanics joining blacks and women to push President Barack Obama
back into the White House. The Republicans are facing a bleak future if they
don't reinvent themselves.
The confetti has long been thrown out, the TV crews have departed, the
buffets have been cleared, the election night "ballrooms" stripped back down
to the cold convention halls they were. What remains are images --
contrasting, silent, strong images which say it all.
Here in Boston, it was the shocked faces of the Republicans who had hoped to
celebrate Mitt Romney's victory but ended up witnessing his political
demise. Hundreds of white, serious faces, many of them middle-aged or
elderly, with blacks, Latinos and other minorities few and far between. The
predominant dress code: ruby-red for women, dark bespoke suits for men.
In Chicago, a thousand miles away, it was an utterly different scene. There,
hugging each other in glee, were 15,000 Democrats of literally all shades:
white, black, Latino, young, old, male, female, straight, gay. They wore
jeans or gowns, baseball caps or church hats, scarves, hijabs, yarmulkes
and, again and again, T-shirts with Obama's stylized countenance.
That's what the new America looks like, and that's what it looked like four
years ago in Chicago's Grant Park, where Obama celebrated his first
presidential victory. But back then it seemed fleeting, just a vision soon
to be smothered by politics.
Obama's re-election has shown that it's more than a vision. "When you do it
once, it's just a victory," writes Ross Douthat of the New York Times. "When
you do it twice, it's a realignment."
And it could be here to stay. The era of monochrome majorities is ending.
The political America looks more and more like a street corner in Manhattan.
"The White Establishment Is Now the Minority"
This new America manifests itself in Obama's multicultural winning
coalition: Latinos, blacks, singles, women and young voters.
It manifests itself in the 20 women who will be inaugurated in the Senate
come January -- among them Tammy Baldwin, the first openly homosexual
senator in US history. It manifests itself in the successful referendums
decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing same-sex marriage. This is not
Ronald Reagan's Hollywood America anymore. It's not Mitt Romney's
black-and-white America, either.
It wasn't enough that the Republican won 59 percent of the white vote. With
79 percent of the non-white vote (93 percent of African-Americans, 73
percent of Asians, 71 percent of Latinos), Obama forged a powerful majority
from the demographic upheaval in the US.
"The white establishment is now the minority," lamented Bill O'Reilly, one
of Romney's loudest cheerleaders at the (predominantly white) cable channel
Fox News, during election night.
This fear also permeated Romney's "victory" party, which morphed into a last
hurrah of said establishment. "I can't find my way around this world
anymore," sighed one older lady, as the night's trend, projected on giant
screens, was no longer deniable. "We were all convinced we'd win."
These new realities are more than images. They are facts, numbers and
demographic data. For the first time in US history, Caucasian births are
less than half of all births in the country. To turn Bill O'Reilly's
grievance on its head, the minorities will soon be the majority. This is
already the case in four US states and cities like New York and Las Vegas.
Latinos, Blacks, Women, Gays and Lesbians
These facts mark the tentative end of a long fight over America's soul. It
was a fight between status quo and momentum; conformity and diversity;
backward and forward. It's no wonder "Forward" was Obama's campaign slogan,
punctuated by an exclamation mark in the last weeks. He ended up winning the
popular vote with a margin of almost three million votes.
Entire generations have turned over. The demographic foundations of the US
have shifted, while the Republican machinery has shrunk. The results are in:
"Our diversity won," writes Peter Staley, a prominent AIDS activist.
This diversity includes Hispanics, the fastest growing population group.
Almost three in four Hispanics voted for Obama, not least thanks to the
Republicans' harsh immigration policies. Democratic Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid promised that comprehensive immigration reform, at which so many
previous presidents failed, is once again a "very high" priority. The
Republicans would do well not to stand in the way this time around.
This diversity includes blacks. In the swing state of Ohio alone, the Obama
ground team's get-out-the-vote efforts managed to increase the black share
of the electorate to 15 percent from 11 percent in 2008. Obama won Ohio,
previously known as a blue-collar stronghold, with a margin of 1.9
percentage points -- and thus won the presidency.
This diversity includes women. Never before did so many women capture Senate
seats. One of them is Elizabeth Warren, now the first woman ever to
represent Massachusetts in the Senate, and Mazie Hirono, the first ever for
Hawaii and the first Asian-American female senator in US history. New
Hampshire's entire congressional delegation plus the new governor: all
women.
This diversity includes gays and lesbians. Obama mentioned them in his
Chicago speech, and for a reason: Under him they've seen their biggest
progress fighting for equal rights, after much initial grumbling. And on
Tuesday, voters in several states signed off on it. They voted yes on
same-sex marriage in Maine and Maryland -- for the first time by popular
vote, not through the courts or legislatures. Early results in Washington
suggest voters there also approved of same-sex marriage, and an amendment to
the Minnesota constitution banning same-sex marriage failed.
"I think it's important to note that the American people have rejected the
idea that our neighbors are our enemies," writes Sue Fulton, an ex-Army
captain who co-founded OutServe, a network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender (LGBT) active-duty military personnel. "This is an expression of
the belief that we're all in this together -- black, white, Anglo, Latino,
gay, straight."
Defeat Leads to Republican Introspection
Meanwhile, the Republicans are missing the boat. Long ignorant to that,
they've now been shell-shocked into the harsh realization that they may end
up on the wrong side of history.
"A Mad Men party in a Modern Family America" -- that's how George W. Bush's
former top strategist Matthew Dowd calls his party now. The TV show Mad Men,
of course, takes place in the 1960's; Modern Family focuses on an
unconventional patchwork family, including a gay couple with an adopted
daughter.
Panic has seized them. "In our party, intolerance can no longer be
tolerated," tweeted the political consultant John Weaver on the next
morning's hangover. "If we're going to win in the future, Republicans need
to do better among Latinos," said Karl Rove, the architect of George W.
Bush's electoral victories.
In 2004, Bush won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote. Bush's younger brother
Jeb, whose wife was born in Mexico, is now considered one of the new -- yet
aging -- hopefuls of the party. Another one is Florida's young senator Marco
Rubio, whose parents are from Cuba.
Hardline Conservatives Will Not Disappear
This will be an acid test for the Republicans. The old guard won't give up
so easily. You only have to watch Fox News, a virtual land of denial where
many commentators refused to acknowledge the results late into the night.
Above all Rove, who kept resisting even after his network had called the
race for Obama.
Obama's win didn't come by itself. The president didn't just rely on
demographic advantages. He buttressed them with his massive ground operation
-- and brutal, uncompromising attacks on Mitt Romney.
This is because he knows that this new America is brittle. Much works
remains. The percentage of black inmates, for instance, is still
disproportionately high, and the percentage of women in Washington
disproportionately low. Hispanics are still being discriminated against, so
are gays and lesbians.
"That era will not last forever," warns Douthat, "It may not even last more
than another four years." In that case, only images would remain.
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Received on Thu Nov 08 2012 - 19:12:21 EST
