Why Barack Obama really got re-elected

Before reading the rest of this post, I suggest you take a look at the exit polls, the most comprehensive of which is available on CNN.com.

Mitt Romney derisively said that Barack Obama won the election because of the "gifts" he gave to women and minorities. If you don't take his words for face value -- uttered out of disappointment of losing one of the more hotly contested elections in recent memory -- he actually has a point.

He basically uttered the reason why he really lost the election -- on the social justice battle, more so than just demographics alone.

The modern definition of social justice centers around a society that allows for an equal opportunity for everyone to succeed. This is the definition that will be used in this post. It's the main sticking point between liberals and progressives that believe that social justice is still a work in progress that is nowhere near complete, while conservatives and libertarians insist that the core objectives of social justice have already been achieved and those that argue against that just simply fail to recognize it. The question of whether or not social justice objectives have been achieved is also a matter of debate racially between liberal-leaning ethnic minorities and conservative-leaning whites.

There's a reason why voices from the conservative media and the Republican Party are opening their eyes to that. Commentators such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh and politicians such as Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Scott Walker of Massachusetts, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour all have came out and said that Republicans need to change their sales pitch to minorities, and in varying degrees, have all realized that to make headway with minority voters, they cannot be completely dismissive and unsympathetic to social justice issues. When taking into consideration that these same personalities of the right are condemning Romney's comments, it makes for a noticeable shift in the GOP's modus operandi.

Voters reason through emotion and social justice carries more weight emotionally than it does logically -- the left's arguments are primarily emotional and secondarily logical; the response from the right is its inverse. However, in the event that one side feels that the ideals of the other side threaten to suppress the ideals of their own, then any logical explanation made by either side is thrown out the window: it's purely emotional. That emotion is often expressed in the savior mentality, most notably this past election cycle in the rabid support of Barack Obama by the Democratic base, the desire by many conservatives to see the triumph of Mitt Romney, and the fervent supporters of Ron Paul. Whichever campaign understood how important it was to take advantage of the emotional argument was going to end up triumphant -- Romney did a decent job, Obama did a fantastic job in that regard.

The true explanation about today's economy, viewed widely as a time of hardship, is that it is final phase of transitioning to a post-industrial economy, and the beliefs that we had in mitigating that transition were completely wrong thanks to poor decisions made in both the private and public sectors. Our awareness of that transition has been made through the media, personal experiences, and pragmatic beliefs shaped by various schools of economic thought, and as such, we positively and negatively equate economic issues to social justice issues. It goes back to the positions that I mentioned previously, but in the economic frame, this amounts to the advocacy of greater government regulation of the economy by the left and a push for lassiez-faire solutions on the right. Strict advocacy of either can manifest itself to heavily distorted viewpoints and becomes a really bad game of telephone when relating these viewpoints to voters.

So here's where minorities come into play, whom voted for Obama on an 8 to 1 margin: minorities comprise 37% of the population and made up 28% of the electorate in the 2012 election, latter up from 26% in 2008. By 2050, these ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the United States population. When the math breaks down, a little under half of all voters that backed Obama were minorities (roughly 22 to 23%). As long as minorities value social justice, and minorities see the Democratic Party as the party that supports social justice, the Democratic contestant (in this case Barack Obama) will always win.

The social justice postulate continues to illustrate itself in regards to income. If you look at the exit polls, specifically the ones on income and a fair component to the income question, what the American economic system generally favors, those that have incomes lower than $100,000 and feel that the American system favors the wealthy (both commanded majorities in those polls), most of them voted for Obama. While this would appear in conflict with the majority of Americans exit polled that felt that the government was doing too much for the economy (think stimulus packages) and voted overwhelmingly for Romney, it is not so much when realizing that the questions are almost mutually exclusive. In the end, those on the lower end of the income scale and those that are of the belief that the economy is slanted towards those with wealth will almost always argue in favor of varying degrees of social justice.

The Democratic Party understands how valuable it is to have a platform that centers around the colloquial definition of social justice in regards to getting voters to support the party. This is why the Democratic Party continues to have a near monopoly on minority voters. A historical example: when the Republican Party was seen as the more socially conscious party, roughly half of black Americans identified themselves as Republican until towards the end of the Eisenhower administration.

The Democratic Party also understood that voters will be mobilized against the candidate that can be perceived as a threat to social justice. Romney, nor any Republican candidates for that matter outside of Huntsman, never completely demonstrated the ability of devoid themselves of that socially threatening stereotype. At the same time though, the media does its part to make sure that it reinforces popular voter stereotypes. Regardless, the mobilization argument explains the record minority voter turn out and a second term for Barack Obama.

So what does this mean for the Republican Party? The next Republican candidate will have to articulate a vision of social justice that would be acceptable to minority voters or the GOP would have to hope that social justice would have to be a relatively moot issue. The only thing is, if social justice is a relatively moot issue by the next Presidential Election, and voters can positively credit Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole, then it sets up for the Democratic Party to dominate the federal election landscape for years to come.

In the end, it was irrelevant who the Republican Party nominated because the party is widely seen as a social justice inhibitor. In my mind, the best candidate to win the election for the GOP would have been Huntsman, while there is a staunch group that insists that it would have been Paul. When social justice was ultimately what this election was about and which candidate would have been seen -- because this is all about perception -- as the most positive social justice torchbearer, minorities will get more apt to get behind that candidate, leading to victory. Huntsman would have fared the best on the GOP side.

Moreover and I'll close by saying this: the realized benefit of social justice is measured by personal worldview and separate ideological benchmarks of success. I would like to think, personally, that we'd start to move away from ideological benchmarks and promote critical thinking strategies in an attempt to objectively comprehend and analyze socioceconomic function.

The Secession Movement

Libertarian and Constitutionalist demigod Ron Paul wrote the following on his official House website (from Politico.com):

"Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. Some felt it was treasonous to secede from England, but those 'traitors' became our country’s greatest patriots. There is nothing treasonous or unpatriotic about wanting a federal government that is more responsive to the people it represents."

That's hard to argue -- in essence. However, he further wrote:

“If the possibility of secession is completely off the table there is nothing to stop the federal government from continuing to encroach on our liberties and no recourse for those who are sick and tired of it."

I'm going to spend three paragraphs doing a brief history lesson; then I'm going to spend the rest of this post explaining the utter shortsightedness of the secession fever.

The United States was formed through secession, indeed, from the British Empire. However, the main sticking point with the Americans was not necessarily the power of the British government -- it is the fact that American colonies had no representation in Parliament. This is where the historical moniker "no taxation without representation" erupted from. Combine this with the American Enlightenment and the influence of classical liberalism and its offshoot republicanism, the monarchy and aristocracy became points of resentment. The rest, as they say, is history: the American colonists, through grit, guerrilla warfare, and the French, successfully wrested independence from Britain in a revolution that was, ironically, led by political and economic elitists mainly out of the Northeast.

The utopia first that was conjured up was the Articles of Confederation where each state was a sovereign state. Unfortunately, the lack of cooperation and consistency among states, thanks to an absence of a central government worth a damn led to it successor document, the United States Constitution. The strange thing about the Constitution? The Constitution created a stronger central government, then left quite a few things very wide open in regards to interpretation, and depending on the tradition that you'd want to follow -- either the Hamiltonian tradition of a strong central government or the Jeffersonian tradition of strong state governments. This would lead to an issue a little more than 70 years later that would take nearly a century to completely resolve.

The antebellum period of the Civil War, which included the industrialization of the northern states, territorial expansion, a strong abolitionist movement, and a social and political dichotomy between Northern and Southern, Slave and Free states, came to address the supremacy of state governments versus the supremacy of the federal government. While historians would argue that the Civil War established the supremacy of the federal government, it was undermined by a lack of social and state cooperation, and aside from slavery, the states that seceded actually achieved more of their objectives after Reconstruction than they did when they tried to bolt from the Union thanks to a mobilized then-white supremacist Democratic Party. The supremacy of the federal government was not firmly established until the New Deal era and Civil Rights Movement which culminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Great Society programs under Lyndon Johnson.

The root of today's secession movement, more of a political fad than anything truly meaningful, is not an indictment against the federal government, but an indictment against the constituency.

While often people want to note that the whole point of the secession movement is the second quote above, that quote, as passionate as it is and as much as it tugs on romantic, patriotic sentiments, is an illustration of the whole shortsightedness of this movement. It is fueled by political emotion that is an end in itself -- in this case, a desire to develop conservative and libertarian paradises in the wake of a hefty federal government.

When a state secedes, it is up to that state to come up with a comprehensive and sustainable plan to develop a self-sufficient state; failure to do so will guarantee that the seceded state will crumble. The perfect example of that would be the nascent United States under the Articles of Confederation: the Continental Congress resented a strong central government due to its issues with Britain and thus developed a form of government out of that resentful emotion. However, Congress found itself in (little) control of a country that was on the brink of collapse when there was no strong central government to enforce cooperation among states.

The Confederacy continued the fallacy: it resented the federal government for enroaching on states' rights, so one by one, the Southern states seceded from the United States.  Focusing too much on states' rights and the guarantee of slavery, each state fairly had its own agenda and barely cooperated with the central government in Richmond. Unsurprisingly, the Confederacy was crushed by the Union Army, despite the Confederacy nearly having the entire white male population mobilized and being highly successful in the early stages of the war.

More often than not, as evidenced by development of the United States Constitution, the emotional drive ends up being undermined by the ultimate grand bargain -- the things that secessionists or revolutionaries rail against ending up adopted because it is realized that it is a necessity for the survival and success of the given state. For the United States, the grand bargain ended up being the Constitution.

The root issue, as noted above, is the desire for a libertarian and conservative state that rejects a government that forces everyone to, well, cooperate with one another. Coerced cooperation is derided as collectivism suppressing individualism and voluntary association. However, cooperation became the global rule of human concert through the genesis of administrative divisions, national identities, and growth of urban areas throughout history, culminating into the one event that would legitimize the position that cooperation holds to this day: the Industrial Revolution. While I'll be the first to advocate for the value of individual and for the right to voluntary association, I'm also a realist -- this world is pretty damn small and this country even smaller.

Yet, I'll include this footnote: just because we, as people, have to cooperate with one another does not mean that we have to completely sacrifice personal individuality, personal choice, individual rights, and individual liberties -- however, we have to remain mindful of those above things with each other. At the same time, the issue in regards to whether or not the federal government is inhibiting the aforementioned things is not an issue with the institution itself, but it is personnel that man that institution, something that the public can have an effect on every two years.

In truth, the bottom line is that it is completely irresponsible to fully believe that a state that is completely banks on an unrealistic level of human altruism to survive can even exist. Political moves fueled by emotion and tunnel visioned worldview can only yield positive results for a short period of time, but never anything beyond that; none of this more true in a post-industrial, globalized world.

So how does this turn into an indictment against the constituency? It is an illustration that Americans focus too much on any divide that can be created -- liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, anti-gay, pro-gay rights, pro-life, pro-choice, etc. We want to take positions that we can see and run with it, hold on and and ingrain in ourselves connotative meanings instead of at least acknowledging any denotative meanings or observations to be seen. The secession movement continues the tradition of trying to find patches to solutions, instead of critically investigating why we are where we are today and constructively develop solutions to the issues of today and not just finding things that are convenient to blame because our ideology tells us to.

The Election Part I - Three Reasons Why Romney Lost

In the most unsurprising outcome to the 2012 Presidential Election, Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States, amassing over 300 electoral votes in the process and a little over 49% of the popular vote. For Mitt Romney and the Republican Party, this election was lost on three fronts -- demographics, making the election too much about Obama, and the Republican Party becoming an increasingly minority creed.

Losing The Demographic Battle

When the final demographic statistics get released, the conclusion will be crystal clear: angry white voters were not going to be enough to put Mitt Romney in the White House. Minorities, whom are heavily socially liberal and progressive, overwhelmingly supported Obama; I expect minority turnout levels, when completely tabulated, will be similar to what it was back in 2008. In addition, the electoral map almost did not change at all from 2008, except that the margin of victory for Obama was clearly smaller. As the Republican Party shifts further to the right, minority resentment for the party will only deepen. To win the demographic battle, the Romney/Ryan campaign and the GOP needed to demonstrate that it can be effective in the arena of social justice, which is the definitive reasons that minorities by large part back the Democratic Party.

The only way that was happening would be if there was a resurgence of moderate Republicans in the tradition of Nelson D. Rockefeller, Richard Nixon, and -- believe it or not -- George Romney. Considering that both parties, especially the Republican Party, insists on ideological purity within its ranks, moderate stances are considered demode and dismissed pejoratively.

In the years ahead, it is going to be a major problem for the Republican Party. The GOP's core constituent population is getting older and still white, and as long as the GOP is seen as the "(rich) white man's party", success in presidential elections will be limited.

Making It Too Much About Obama

The GOP spent the past four years painting Barack Obama as the great big liberal boogeyman, the root of all evil in regards to the current state of the country, and it ultimately cost them the election. Romney's candidacy was fueled by the desire for the conservative rank-and-file to rid Obama from the White House; you could tell this at the moment when conservative pundits actually embraced the return of Mitt The Moderate after the Republican National Convention.

Long story short, the anti-Obama sentiment was largely taken for granted. And in truth it is the exact same mistake that the Democrats made back in 2004, when Democrats believed that the souring mood on the Second Gulf War would have wrestled the White House from George W. Bush after only one term. It is very hard to unseat an incumbent after a single term -- not only it takes widespread resentment, but it also takes fielding a candidate that many voters could be come enamored with, such as Ronald Reagan back in 1980. Romney was a symbol of what enough voters resented to the point that it ended up costing him votes.

Voters were never really allowed to become enamored with Romney because the campaign was never about Romney himself; the campaign was about Romney in spite of Obama. While the whole goal of campaigning is for one politician to paint his or herself better than the other, it is when focusing too much on what is wrong with the opponent and what is right with his or herself that the campaign becomes heavily undermined. 

The GOP Becoming An Increasingly Minority Creed

As the United States, in general, continues to shift more and more to the center, the GOP is continuing to head in the other direction, as I mentioned before, by becoming more and more conservative. As Republicans wholeheartedly insist on ideological purity at the behest of its voters, a growing number of voters are being left with a sour taste in their mouths when it comes to the party and the politicians of the party.

The Republican Party needed to purport itself as a more moderate party to make inroads with independent voters that regard themselves as centrist. However, considering some of the more abhorrent comments made by other GOP candidates (i.e., Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, who both lost their elections), a golden opportunity was lost to change people's perceptions and it cost Mitt Romney votes. 

In the end, the reality was that Romney had little chance to win the election. He didn't have the right demographics, his campaign took popular resentment and disappointment with Barack Obama for granted, and his party is becoming something that more and more Americans don't like.