Commentary

What Has Changed and What
Endures as Obama Returns
An analysis that highlights the demands of the new demographic and the old economic status quo, raises questions of the meaning of true solidarity.

by Anujeet Sareen

After two years of political campaigning and six billion dollars of political advertising, the White House and Congress in 2013 will look an awful lot like the government we already have today. Americans remain exceptionally divided and once again we send to Washington one of the most polarized governments in our history. Has anything really changed?
Before the election, voters felt that the economy was the most important issue and that Governor Romney was more qualified to address our economic challenges than President Obama. And yet it was President Obama who returned to office. What gives? Mr. Romney handily won the support of white Americans (59% to 39%) in this election–if Mitt Romney's father, George Romney, had received that kind of support in 1968, he would have easily won the Republican nomination over Richard Nixon and easily won the White House as well. But Mitt Romney’s America is very different than George Romney’s America. President Barack Obama can credit his election victory this year to the sizeable (and still growing) presence of Latin American voters in U.S. politics.
The 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, understood this demographic shift because, as governor of Texas, the Hispanic vote and immigration issue were particularly important. Governor Rick Perry, current governor of Texas, also understands this issue better than the broader Republican Party–he signed a bill that allowed Texas residents without legal U.S. resident status to attend Texas colleges, while paying in-state tuition. The bill passed the Texas legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support. Unfortunately, Romney’s criticism of this policy was successful in helping him win the Republican primary. In retrospect, this position may have helped Governor Romney garner more support from the extreme wing of the Republican Party nationally, but it most likely cost him the general election. The Republican Party has yet to come to terms with the reality of this demographic shift and the consequences of an approach to immigration that does not fully take into account the human drama of both illegal and legal immigrants. And this demographic shift has not yet run its course. For the first time in 2011, minority births surpassed white births in the United States, and the longer demographic trend places white Americans in the minority by 2041.
But there is actually a deeper political shift that underlies President Obama’s re-election. After four years in office, President Obama still leads a country with very depressed levels of consumer confidence, an unemployment rate still near 8%, and an increase in the federal debt of nearly five trillion dollars–hardly a resume that validates “hope and change.” So why did voters, regardless of demographics, return President Obama to power? 2007 marked the peak of a certain strain of capitalism in the United States, an ideology that prized individualism above all else. The fall of Communism in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the technology boom of the ’90s, the slow growth of a more socialist Europe and Japan, and the home ownership boom in the 2000s, seemed to validate a certain triumphalism in America that its conception of freedom was clearly the best model for human society. But then came the Great Recession of 2008. Even more troubling than persistent unemployment is the fact that the long-term unemployed now comprise a staggering 40% of total unemployment, nearly twice as high as any level we have seen since WWII. Meanwhile, income inequality has increased sharply over the last few decades and now stands at historically high levels. If you then consider the fact that corporate profits have now eclipsed their previous cyclical highs and the fact that the stock market is nearing its previous highs, one begins to wonder who really benefits from this American individualism. Real median household income has not changed in 25 years even as income inequality has worsened.
The economic uncertainty of Americans has shifted the focus of the country toward an emphasis on fairness and justice. However, one needs to be careful in over-interpreting this election result–mere populism is not a substitute for true solidarity. Indeed, if our problem was only with the “the top 1%,” then the country and Washington would not be so divided.  Both parties will better serve our nation if their pursuit of the common good begins from a truer conception of our human condition.