- Published on Wednesday, 07 November 2012 19:34
- Written by AP
WASHINGTON—President
Barack Obama’s victory means that everything he campaigned upon is
alive and about to drive the political conversation with his
adversaries. Every legacy of his first term is safe and enshrined to
history.
Yet big honeymoons
don’t come twice and Republicans won’t swoon. If Obama cannot end
gridlock in Washington, his second term will be reduced to veto threats,
empty promises, end runs around Congress and legacy-sealing forays into
foreign lands.
Obama will push for
higher taxes on the wealthy as a way to shrink a choking federal debt
and to steer money toward the programs he wants. He will try to land a
massive financial deficit-cutting deal with Congress in the coming
months and then move on to an immigration overhaul, tax reform and other
bipartisan dreams.
He will not have to
worry that his health-care law will be repealed, or that his Wall Street
reforms will be gutted, or that his name will be consigned to the list
of one-term presidents who got fired before they could finish their
work. Voters stuck with him because they trusted him more to solve the
struggles of their lifetime.
America may not be
filled with hope anymore, but it told Mitt Romney to keep his change.
And voters sure didn’t shake up the rest of Washington, either.
They put back all the
political players who have made the capital dysfunctional to the point
of nearly sending the United States of America into default.
“Progress will come in
fits and starts,” the president cautioned in his victory speech. “The
recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won’t end all the
gridlock...or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus.
But that common bond is where we must begin.”
The president likely
will be dealing again with a Republican-run House of Representatives,
whose leader, Speaker John Boehner, declared on election night that his
party has orders from voters, too: no higher taxes.
Obama will still have
his firewall in the Senate, with Democrats hanging onto their narrow
majority. But they don’t have enough to keep Republicans from bottling
up any major legislation with delaying tactics.
So the burden falls on the president to find compromise, not just demand it from the other side.
Obama won the
electoral vote comfortably, but the popular vote showed the nation he
leads—split right in half.Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell
welcomed Obama with both arms folded.
“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.
The vanquished Republican, Romney, tried to set the tone on the way off the national 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.”
For now, Obama can revel in knowing what he pulled off.
Obama won despite an
economy that sucked away much of the nation’s spirit. He won with the
highest unemployment rate—at 7.9 percent—for any incumbent since the
Great Depression of the 1930s. He won even though voters said they
thought Romney would be the better choice to end stalemate in
Washington.
He won even though a
huge majority of voters said they were not better off than they were
four years ago—a huge test of survival for a president.
The reason is that
voters wanted the president they knew. They believed convincingly that
Obama, not Romney, understood their woes of college costs and insurance
bills and sleepless nights. Exit polls showed that voters viewed Obama
as the voice of the poor and the middle class, and Romney the guy
tilting toward the rich.
The suspense was over
early because Obama won all over the map of battleground states, and
most crucially in Ohio. That’s where he rode his bailout support for the
auto industry to a victory that crushed Romney’s chances.
The voice of the voter
came through from 42-year-old Bernadette Hatcher in Indianapolis, who
voted after finishing an overnight shift at a warehouse.
“It’s all about what he’s doing,” she said. “No one can correct everything in four years. Especially the economy.”
Formidable and
seasoned by life, Romney had in his pocket corporate success and a
Massachusetts governor’s term and the lessons of a first failed
presidential bid.
But he never broke through as the man who would secure people’s security and their dreams. He was close the whole time.
“I mean, I looked,”
said Tamara Johnson of Apex, North Carolina, a 35-year-old mother of two
young children. “I didn’t feel I got the answers I wanted or needed to
hear. And that’s why I didn’t sway that way.”
The election was never
enthralling, and it was fought for far too long in the shallow moments
of negative ads and silly comments. It seemed like the whole country
endured it until the end, when the crowds grew and the candidates
reached for their most inspiring words.
“Americans don’t
settle. We build, we aspire, we listen to that voice inside that says
‘We can do better,’” Romney pleaded toward that end.
Americans agreed. They just wanted Obama to take them there.
Incumbents get no transition, so Obama will be tested immediately.
A “fiscal cliff” of expiring tax cuts and budget cuts looms on January 1.
If they kick in, economists warn the economy will tank, again. Obama, at least, won the right to fight the fight on his terms.
“If I’ve won, then I
believe that’s a mandate for doing it in a balanced way,” he said before
the election—that is, fixing the budget problem by raising taxes on
people instead of just cutting spending. Obama is adamant that he will
not agree to extend tax cuts for people making above $200,000 or couples
with incomes above $250,000.
He had not even been declared the winner before Boehner offered a warning that the House was still in Republican hands.
“With this vote,” Boehner said, “the American people have also made clear that there is no mandate for raising tax rates.”
Obama, never one to lack from confidence, is ready to take that fight to Congress.
In his eyes, he just won it, thanks to the voters.
In Photo: President
Barack Obama and wife Michelle hold hands with Vice President Joe Biden
and his wife Jill following Obama’s victory speech to supporters in
Chicago early on Wednesday. (AP)
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