Obama's re-elected despite tough economic times

WASHINGTON (AP) — His lease renewed in try­ing eco­nomic times, Pres­i­dent Barack Obama claimed a sec­ond term from an incred­i­bly divided elec­torate and imme­di­ately braced for daunt­ing chal­lenges and progress that comes only in fits and starts.

“We have fought our way back and we know in our hearts that for the United States of Amer­ica, the best is yet to come,” Obama said.

The same vot­ers who gave Obama another four years also elected a divided Con­gress, re-upping the dynamic that has made it so hard for the pres­i­dent to advance his agenda. Democ­rats retained con­trol of the Sen­ate; Repub­li­cans renewed their major­ity in the House.

It was a sweet vic­tory for Obama, but noth­ing like the jubi­lant cel­e­bra­tion of four years ear­lier, when his hope-and-change elec­tion as the nation’s first black pres­i­dent cap­ti­vated the world. This time, Obama ground out his win with a stay-the-course pitch that essen­tially boiled down to a plea for more time to make things right and a hope that Con­gress will be more accom­mo­dat­ing than in the past.

The van­quished Repub­li­can, Mitt Rom­ney, tried to set a more con­cil­ia­tory tone on the way off the stage.

“At a time like this, we can’t risk par­ti­san bick­er­ing,” Rom­ney said after a cam­paign filled with it. “Our lead­ers have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work.”

House Speaker John Boehner spoke of a dual man­date, say­ing, “If there is a man­date, it is a man­date for both par­ties to find com­mon ground and take steps together to help our econ­omy grow and cre­ate jobs.”

Sen­ate Repub­li­can Leader Mitch McConnell had a more harsh assessment.

“The vot­ers have not endorsed the fail­ures or excesses of the president’s first term,” McConnell said. “They have sim­ply given him more time to fin­ish the job they asked him to do together” with a bal­anced Congress.

Obama claimed a com­mand­ing elec­toral man­date — at least 303 elec­toral votes to 206 for Rom­ney — and had a near-sweep of the nine most hotly con­tested bat­tle­ground states.

But the close break­down in the pop­u­lar vote showed Amer­i­cans’ dif­fer­ences over how best to meet the nation’s chal­lenges. With more than 90 per­cent of precincts report­ing, the pop­u­lar vote went 50 per­cent for Obama to 48.4 per­cent for Rom­ney, the businessman-turned-politician who had argued that Obama had failed to turn around the econ­omy and said it was time for a new approach keyed to lower taxes and a less intru­sive government.

Obama’s re-election assured cer­tainty on some fronts: His sig­na­ture health-care over­haul will endure, as will the Wall Street reforms enacted after the eco­nomic melt­down. The draw­down of troops in Afghanistan will con­tinue apace. And with an aging Supreme Court, the pres­i­dent is likely to have at least one more nom­i­na­tion to the high court.

The chal­lenges imme­di­ately ahead for the 44th pres­i­dent are all too famil­iar: an econ­omy still baby-stepping its way toward full health, 23 mil­lion Amer­i­cans still out of work or in search of bet­ter jobs, civil war in Syria, an omi­nous stand­off over Iran’s nuclear pro­gram, and more.

Sharp dif­fer­ences with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress on taxes, spend­ing, deficit reduc­tion, immi­gra­tion and more await.

And even before Obama gets to his sec­ond inau­gural on Jan. 20, he must grap­ple with the threat­ened “fis­cal cliff” — a com­bi­na­tion of auto­matic tax increases and steep across-the-board spend­ing cuts that are set to take effect in Jan­u­ary if Wash­ing­ton doesn’t quickly come up with a workaround bud­get deal. Econ­o­mists have warned the econ­omy could tip back into reces­sion absent a deal.

Despite long lines at polls in many places, turnout over­all looked to be down from four years ago as the pres­i­dent pieced together a win­ning coali­tion of women, young peo­ple, minori­ties and lower-income vot­ers that reflected the country’s chang­ing demo­graph­ics. Obama’s supe­rior ground orga­ni­za­tion in the bat­tle­ground states was key to his success.

The president’s vic­tory speech — he’d writ­ten a con­ces­sion, too, just in case — reflected the real­i­ties of the rough road ahead.

“By itself the recog­ni­tion that we have com­mon hopes and dreams won’t end all the grid­lock, or solve all our prob­lems or sub­sti­tute for the painstak­ing work of build­ing con­sen­sus and mak­ing the dif­fi­cult com­pro­mises needed to move this coun­try for­ward,” Obama said.

“But that com­mon bond is where we must begin. Our econ­omy is recov­er­ing. A decade of war is end­ing. A long cam­paign is now over, and whether I earned your vote or not, I have lis­tened to you, I have learned from you and you have made me a bet­ter president.”

The pres­i­dent said he hoped to meet with Rom­ney and dis­cuss how they can work together. They may have bat­tled fiercely, he said, “but it’s only because we love this coun­try deeply.”

Romney’s short con­ces­sion — with mis­placed con­fi­dence, he’d only pre­pared an accep­tance speech — was a gra­cious end note after a gru­el­ing campaign.

He wished the president’s fam­ily well and told sub­dued sup­port­ers in Boston, “I so wish that I had been able to ful­fill your hopes to lead the coun­try in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, but the nation chose another leader and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.”

Obama’s re-election was a remark­able achieve­ment given that Amer­i­cans are any­thing but enthu­si­as­tic about the state they’re in: Only about 4 in 10 vot­ers thought the econ­omy is get­ting bet­ter, just one quar­ter thought they’re bet­ter off finan­cially than four years ago and a lit­tle more than half think the coun­try is on the wrong track, exit polls showed.

But even now, four years after George W. Bush left office, vot­ers were more likely to blame Bush than Obama for the fix they’re in.

It wasn’t just the pres­i­dent and Con­gress who were on the bal­lot. Vot­ers around the coun­try con­sid­ered bal­lot mea­sures on a num­ber of divi­sive social issues, with Maine and Mary­land becom­ing the first states to approve same-sex mar­riage by pop­u­lar vote while Wash­ing­ton state and Col­orado legal­ized recre­ational use of marijuana.

From the begin­ning, Obama had an eas­ier path than Rom­ney to the 270 elec­toral votes needed for vic­tory. The most expen­sive cam­paign in his­tory was nar­rowly tar­geted at peo­ple in nine bat­tle­ground states that held the key to vic­tory, and the two sides drenched vot­ers there with more than a mil­lion ads, the over­whelm­ing share of them negative.

Obama claimed at least seven of the bat­tle­ground states, most notably Ohio, the Ground Zero of cam­paign 2012. He also got Iowa, New Hamp­shire, Col­orado, Nevada, Vir­ginia and Wis­con­sin, and he was ahead in Florida. Rom­ney got North Carolina.

Over­all, Obama won 25 states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia and was lead­ing in too-close-to-call Florida. Rom­ney won 24 states.

It was a more mea­sured vic­tory than four years ago, when Obama claimed 365 elec­toral votes to McCain’s 173, win­ning with 53 per­cent of the pop­u­lar vote.

Obama was judged by 53 per­cent of vot­ers to be more in touch with peo­ple like them. More good news for him: Six in 10 vot­ers said that taxes should be increased. And nearly half of vot­ers said taxes should be increased on income over $250,000, as Obama has called for.

Obama’s list of promises to keep includes many holdovers he was unable to deliver on in his first term: rolling back tax cuts for upper-income peo­ple, immi­gra­tion reform, reduc­ing fed­eral deficits, and more.

A sec­ond term is sure to pro­duce turnover in his Cab­i­net: Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Tim­o­thy Gei­th­ner has made it clear he wants to leave at the end of Obama’s first term but is expected to remain in the post until a suc­ces­sor is con­firmed. Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Rod­ham Clin­ton, Obama’s rival for the pres­i­dency four years ago, is ready to leave too. Defense Sec­re­tary Leon Panetta isn’t expected to stay on.

To the end, the pres­i­den­tial race was a nail-biter. About 1 in 10 vot­ers said they’d only set­tled on their pres­i­den­tial choice within the last few days or even on Elec­tion Day, and they were closely divided between Obama and Rom­ney. Nearly 1 per­cent of vot­ers went for Lib­er­tar­ian Party can­di­date Gary John­son, who was on the bal­lot in 48 states.

In an elec­tion offer­ing sharply dif­fer­ent views on the role of gov­ern­ment, vot­ers ulti­mately nar­rowly tilted toward Obama’s approach.

“We have seen growth in the econ­omy,” said 25-year-old Matt Wiec­zorek, a reg­is­tered Repub­li­can from Cincin­nati who backed the pres­i­dent. “Maybe not as fast as we want it to be, but Obama has made a dif­fer­ence and I don’t want to see that growth come to an end.”

Notwith­stand­ing his vic­tory, Obama will lead a nation with plenty of peo­ple who were ready for a change.

“The last four years have been crap,” said 73-year-old Mar­vin Cleve­land, a Rom­ney sup­porter in Roseville, Minn. “Let’s try some­thing else.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.