Now that the 2012 Presidential election is ancient history, (it was after all two whole weeks ago), it might be productive to determine why things went the way they did, so perhaps we can guide them in a different direction next time. So why did Barack Obama win and Mitt Romney lose?
First of all, the popular vote was pretty close, 50% to 48%. And of the 120 million or so votes cast, less than 400,000 votes changed in Ohio, Florida, Virginia, and New Hampshire combined would have resulted in a President Romney. (Of course the Electoral College result looks much more lopsided than that.)
So what went wrong? Well here goes.
First, the much heralded and anticipated “October Surprise” turned out to be, the weather – Hurricane Sandy. Prior to the hurricane, Romney had the momentum, and I think Obama knew he was in trouble. The first debate had been a disaster for Obama, and a triumph for Romney. (Unfortunately, in the second two debates Romney didn’t go for the jugular, and Obama was able to recover somewhat as a result.) But Hurricane Sandy allowed Obama to appear and act “Presidential”, Governor Christie’s bear hug received widespread coverage, and Romney’s momentum was stopped dead in its tracks. In fact, exit polling showed that 42% of voters said that Obama’s handling of Hurricane Sandy was either “an important” or “the most important” consideration in their vote! And Obama received the votes of these people by a more than 2 to 1 margin.
Next, demographics. Back in 2000, when George W. Bush won the first time, over 80% of voters in the U.S. were white. Now, it’s 70%. Now in theory, this really shouldn’t matter. We should look at and treat people equally, without regard to skin color or ethnicity. The reality is that African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats (even more so for Barack Obama), and Hispanics and Asians are trending strongly in the same direction. This is something that absolutely must be addressed by Republicans, or we will go the way of the Whig Party, and America is doomed.
Young people went strongly for Obama, despite the fact that 50% of college graduates can’t find a job in their field, or can’t find a job at all. Some of this probably has to do with the “coolness” factor, that Obama apparently has, and Mitt Romney and I guess most other Republican candidates lack. Many young people get their news coverage from the likes of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, and get a heavy dose of propaganda from hip hop artists and Hollywood (not traditional bastions of conservative thinking.) We’ve got to do a better job with these young impressionable minds, or again, we’re Whigs.
As much as Republicans thought they had their grassroots, ground game organized, (mostly with volunteers), the Democrats were better. For example, the Romney Campaign had about four months to open campaign offices (Victory Centers) in the 10 or so battleground states – Obama had four years. And it showed. Obama had four times the number of campaign offices. And they were humming. The Democrats meticulously identified their voters, and they got them to vote early, or to the polls on Election Day. To illustrate how organized their early vote effort was in the battleground state of Ohio, in the early vote in the First and Second Congressional Districts of Ohio, both Brad Wenstrup and I were losing to relatively weak Democrat opponents when the early vote counts were released on Election Night. We both ultimately won with 58 and 59% of the total vote, but we were losing among early voters. Multiply that across the country. And remember, Obama only won by 2%.
Now a few things were shortcomings in the Romney campaign itself. There was the strategy that this was a referendum on Obama, rather than a choice between Obama and Romney. In other words, convincing people that Obama had been a failure was enough, it wouldn’t be necessary to convince voters about what a Romney Presidency would mean for the country. This proves to be a key mistake.
For one thing, the national unemployment number had fallen to just under 8% a few weeks before the election. This was just enough light at the end of the tunnel to convince just enough Americans that the economy, although still weak, was at least arguably moving in the right direction. And besides, according to exit polling, only 38% of voters blamed Obama for the bad economy – 53% still bought the Obama campaign’s story that it was George Bush’s fault!
Another Romney campaign failure was dealing with the perception that Bain Capital Mitt Romney enjoyed shutting down plants, shipping jobs off to China, and firing people. The Romney campaign had plenty of time to see this one coming; after all, Newt Gingrich had attempted to use this line of attack against Romney in the Republican primary. Romney faced the additional challenge that the Obama campaign and its allies ran hundreds of millions of dollars in T.V. attack ads on this matter after Romney had essentially sewn up the Republican primary, but before the Republican Convention when he actually received the nomination. The problem was that Romney at that time was out of money, and by the time he could legally raise money as the Republican candidate, the impression of him as an uncaring, job-destroying robber baron had already sunk in.
And then there was Romney’s 47% comment. What he meant was that as more and more people become dependent on the government, they naturally vote for the party of government, the Democrats, and so he would spend his time and effort going after voters who were more likely to be open to voting for him. What Obama and the mainstream press spun the comment as was he didn’t care about the 47% and would essentially ignore them as President. This flap really hurt the Romney campaign.
And finally, the mainstream press’s handling of the Benghazi matter was a disgrace. An American Ambassador and three other brave Americans are murdered. The Obama Administration has dropped the ball on requests to beef up security, ignored desperate calls for help in real time when Americans are under siege, and then lied to the American people about what caused the debacle, pointing the finger of blame at an online movie trailer, and denying terrorists were responsible, when they clearly were. The mainstream press yawned, and continues to do so. I would submit that had this been a Republican Administration, the mainstream press would have been on this like Watergate II.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. Let me know what you think. And how we can prepare for 2014 and 2016 so they’re not repeats of this disappointing election cycle.
