Barack Obama (CC'83) Wins Second Term

President Obama’s re-election gives him the opportunity to build on the successes and failures of his first term. In environment and sustainability the president has enjoyed some modest successes but now has the opportunity to be truly transformative.

His successes have included substantial and largely well-spent investments in green energy, the regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and dramatic increases in motor vehicle fuel efficiency standards. His largest failure was the inability to enact dramatic new climate change policies. But even in the post-Sandy environment, I do not see global climate treaties or cap and trade reaching the American political agenda. The problem is that the delicate economic recovery does not permit policies that might raise the costs of fossil fuel.

What I hope to see instead is the same type of policy pivot we saw here in New York City when Mayor Michael Bloomberg went from suspending recycling in his first term to becoming the world’s most prominent sustainability mayor in his second and third terms.

Obama certainly understands that the transition to a renewable resource-based economy can fuel economic growth and employment. But he has not effectively communicated this point to the public.

The president could make the transition to a sustainable economy the central theme of his second term. This would include investment in basic science, such as the work we do at the Earth Institute’s Lamont campus, and renewable energy technology. But it would also include federal infrastructure investment in smart grid technology, mass transit and water supply.

It is difficult to determine the probability that the president will make sustainability the central theme of his second term. His first term was characterized by substantial reform efforts, such as the Affordable Care Act, but he was distracted by an obstructionist Congress that seemed mainly focused on inflicting political defeat on him.

One question that emerges for Obama’s second term is whether some Republicans will recognize that “no” was an unsuccessful political strategy. The president can help Republicans who are open to a different approach by redefining and repackaging his environmental initiatives.

In the coming weeks, the president will need to address two central issues: jobs and the federal deficit. Environment will be relegated to the political backwater unless it is directly tied to the goal of economic growth.

Rather than tax carbon and raise the cost of energy, the administration should work to reduce the percentage of the GDP devoted to energy. The president can use energy investment to stimulate the economy, by subsidizing renewable energy, smart grids and energy efficiency and funding basic science and engineering.

The Affordable Care Act is a partnership between government, private insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry and nonprofit hospitals. Our renewable energy program should be built with a similar partnership between government, energy companies, electric utilities and universities.

If we do not see a bold step like this, my guess is that we will see modest improvements in federal environmental regulation along with a half-hearted effort to invest in infrastructure to protect us from Sandylike weather.

The future direction of the Republican Party is uncertain in the wake of the election. So too is the question of whether Barack Obama will be able to exercise stronger control over the direction of policy than he did in the last two years of his first term.

There is one clear conclusion that can be drawn from the outcome Nov. 6. The liberal, social and cultural revolution that began in the 1960s has become entrenched in American society, and continues its inexorable advance.

The evidence is pervasive: a presidential election between an African American and a Mormon, i.e., no mainstream white Protestant candidate; the election of Tammy Baldwin, a gay woman, to the Senate from Wisconsin; legalization by ballot initiative of marijuana for recreational use in Colorado and Washington state; the defeat of two once-favored Republican Senate candidates, Richard Mourdock in Indiana and Todd Akin in Missouri, who both rejected conception stemming from rape as grounds for a woman's right to abortion; and the passage of gay marriage referenda in Maine and Maryland, just eight years after George W. Bush used opposition to the proposal to gain advantage in the 2004 election.

The particular dynamics of American politics make it very difficult for presidential candidates to address the problems we are facing in a very serious way. Neither Obama nor Romney could admit that the United States of America is at a real crossroads where if it doesn’t get its act together pretty soon it’s going to be very clearly a declining power.

Nobody likes to hear that. The idea of American exceptionalism runs very strong, even though when you look at the comparative data on a lot of different things America’s no longer all that exceptional. In many respects we’re not leaders anymore. How often during the campaign did anybody talk about inequality? I don’t think the word ever came up, to tell you the truth. How often did the candidates talk about social mobility? They talked about education but with no clarity about how to make our declining system of primary and secondary education better. They talked about our perilous public finances, I have to give them credit for that, although they didn’t speak with much specificity.

But huge problems, like inequality, social immobility, financial deficits, economic decline, are issues that they really never addressed very seriously. I’m drawn to a different model for presidential elections, something much closer to the British model where you have a very limited campaign, where financing is done publicly rather than this indefensible system of campaign financing that we have now, where if you’ve got money in your pockets you can buy votes. In a democracy that shouldn’t be the case.

We need to get our collective act together pretty fast or we’ll be in a slide from which there will be limited prospects for recovery. That’s not good for the U.S or the world at large.

President Obama returns to Washington for four more years, and for at least the next two he returns to a Capitol of divided government: Democrats are a majority of the Senate, while Republicans constitute the majority of the House. Democrats have 54 votes in the Senate, but lack the 60 votes needed to effectively control the Senate. Recognizing this, Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate announced shortly after Obama’s election that he would press for filibuster reform—changing Senate Rules which allow forty-one Senators to block a vote on an action supported by the majority.

Some argue we should maintain the status quo. Much of the power of the Senate, one often hears, lies in the filibuster. The framers of the Constitution famously conceived of the Senate as the more deliberative branch of government, designed to counter the populist House and check a powerful Executive. More recently, some Senate Democrats defended their right to filibuster George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, successfully resisting Republican attempts to change Senate Rules to restrict extended debate.

Those opposed to the filibuster, however, cast doubt on the constitutional and historical arguments in its favor. Some argue that the filibuster is an unconstitutional imposition of a supermajority. Where the constitution means to provide a supermajority requirement—to approve a treaty or override a veto—it explicitly does so. The limitation of this argument, however, is that the constitution also gives each House the power to “determine the Rules of its Proceedings.” Opponents of the filibuster are on stronger ground when they question the longevity of the filibuster. The historical evidence shows that though the Senate lacked a way to cut off debate for much of its history (since 1806), Senators did not commonly engage in extensive debate to delay or block action until the late 19th century.

In the end, the most persuasive arguments against the filibuster are about policy and governance today. The modern filibuster is rarely about deliberation and debate, but more often about delay and obstruction. Filibusters are now so common that we typically understand 60 votes as the amount needed to do anything in the Senate.

Proposals to reform the filibuster include requiring senators to remain on the Senate floor if they are filibustering a bill and requiring a decreasing majority of Senators for invoking cloture over a number of days. These measures seek to preserve the deliberative virtues of current Senate procedures while diminishing the use of the filibuster purely to block measures.

The Senate agreed on modest changes in early 2011—agreeing to end the practice of anonymous holds on legislation and nominations for instance. But more extensive changes are unlikely to move forward easily. Moreover, it is not clear that there are 51 votes in the Senate to pursue any strategy for filibuster reform. The problem is simple: How you see the filibuster often depends on whether you are in the majority or in the minority—and on how long you expect to remain there.

More than 11 years after 9/11, the threat of terrorism has faded in the minds of most Americans. The Afghanistan War, the longest in the country’s history, continues to be fought against remnants of Al Qaeda Central and their allies on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani borders. But when asked last month to pick from a list of important issues/problems for Congress to focus on, only two percent of respondents selected “terrorism and homeland security.” While the public’s diminished fear of terrorism is a healthy development after years of overblown threat alerts, terrorism and counterterrorism will continue to rank high on the agenda of the new and old executive and legislative branch.

In the last presidential debate, moderator Bob Schieffer asked the candidates, “What do you believe is the greatest future threat to the national security of this country?” The president answered, “Well, I think it will continue to be terrorist networks. We have to remain vigilant.” Former Governor Romney said that “the greatest national security threat is a nuclear Iran.”

The present and future president will have to deal with both threats—one directly tied to non-state political violence, the other to a notorious state sponsor of terrorism.

Today and in the foreseeable future, the most serious threat comes from a growing global network of autonomous cells, hubs and in some cases guerilla groups, all of which are inspired by the original Al Qaeda’s extremist ideology of hate and terror. In particular in sub-Sahara Africa and in Arab countries in turmoil Al Qaeda-inspired jihadists contribute to bloodshed and instability. In the coming years, Al Qaeda Central and like-minded groups, cells, and lone wolves inside and outside Western countries will plot to strike Americans here and abroad.

A nuclear Iran, as Mitt Romney suggested during the campaign, poses a threat to America’s national security and that of Israel and certain Arab and European states. There is less concern that Iran will launch a nuclear attack but rather that the mullahs will put those lethal weapons in the hands of non-state surrogates. The danger of nuclear arms available to terrorists is equally as great concerning North Korea and, perhaps, Pakistan.

The Obama administration has utilized a mix of hard and soft power to deal with direct and indirect threats of terrorism. While not agreeing with all parts of the president’s counterterrorism policies, I believe that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was right when he said in his endorsement of President Obama, ”I think that the actions he has taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very, very solid. And so, I think we ought to keep on the track that we are on."

Portrayed as the most swingable of swing voters, many political strategists lost sleep over the last months guessing how much Latino support their candidates would need to win the 2012 elections. As it turned out, these voters were not all that swingable: As in to 2008, a whopping number of Latinos—perhaps as high as 76 percent—supported Barack Obama. But as predicted, the fact that most Latinos came out swinging for the president, including in many battleground states, seems to have made a substantial difference.

Just to give a sense of how deep the political ground is shifting due to new demographic dynamics: In Florida, the surge of Puerto Ricans in the central region seemed to have canceled out the Republican-leaning Cuban Americans in the south. Obama also carried the day in Nevada and Colorado, two other swing states in which Latinos constitute between 20 to 26 percent of the population. Even in Virginia, where Latinos make up only eight percent of residents, they helped deliver the state for Obama.

Apart from assisting the president in his re-election, what else does the record-setting participation of Latinos mean for American politics?

Increasingly, parties who demean Latinos and ignore their concerns will likely not win the White House. To a large extent, it was the Republican Party's punishing anti-Latino immigration rhetoric and promise to target social programs like the Affordable Health Care Act that became huge drivers of Latino support for Obama. And Latino voters, particularly women, tend to believe more strongly than other Americans that government has an important role to play in creating a more even playing field of opportunity in all areas of family well-being, including not only affordable health care but also affordable housing and public education. And, if the government delivers, Latino voters are also more willing to pay higher taxes. As Latinos become a greater share of the electorate, these values may be increasingly perceived less as “liberal” than part of a new mainstream.

So, if trends hold, the question that may well define the 2016 campaign will not be for whom Latinos swing. But how far and wide will the parties swing for Latinos.

By now, we are all as tired of "Bronco Bamma" and Mitt Romney as the teary-eyed four year old in Colorado. What the arduous campaign made clear, though, is that the 2012 presidential election meant more for the American public than just about any other political race in recent memory. This was an election about the future of America: whether we return to the Bush-era policies of deregulation, slash-and-burn government and growing income inequality. Or do we keep an administration committed to pro-market regulations, investments in research and development, rebuilding the nation’s crippled infrastructure, renewable energyand education.

The results were fairly decisive: Democrats retained the presidency, winning over 303 electoral votes, and gained seats in both the House and the Senate. Despite an economy that is still lurching toward full recovery after the financial meltdown four years ago, voters apparently believe that the Democrats’ recipe for growth is superior to the Republicans’.

Looking forward, this last point is crucial. The Republicans went about as far as they could go simply attacking the Democrats’ lack of success in turning the economy around. They came up short in large part because once attention inevitably turn to their own proposed solutions, they had nothing more to offer than a repeat of the Bush-era policies that caused the meltdown in the first place. Republicans can seize upon any number of incidental factors to explain their loss: Hurricane Sandy, Democrats’ superior use of early voting, a messenger that came across as a caricature of a turn-of-the century plutocrat—Thurston Howell III minus the humor—and a raft of Tea Party candidates that failed to win general elections in key House and Senate races.

In the long run, though, none of these factors is as important as the basic fact that the Republicans are still clinging to an economic ideology that is not popular with the voters and with a track record of failure. Plus they are tied to a conservative social agenda that puts them at odds with a good portion of the voters, especially women and Hispanics. It remains to be seen if in four years’ time new leadership in the Republican Party can fashion a platform that moves beyond the standard right-wing positions to a more modern view where the state has a positive role to play in preserving social welfare and encouraging future growth.

The presidential election of 2012 may be remembered as a crucial turning point in the long struggle for gay and lesbian equality. Not only did the country reelect Barack Obama, the first sitting president to support same-sex marriage, but voters also delivered decisive victories for gay and lesbian rights on state ballot measures. Electoral majorities in Maine, Maryland and Washington ratified proposals that will allow same-sex couples to marry, while their counterparts in Minnesota rejected a constitutional ban on such marriages.

These victories were truly unprecedented. Prior to Nov. 6, the proponents of marriage equality had never won a state ballot contest, accumulating an uninspiring record of zero wins and 32 losses. Tuesday's victories reflect the American public's changing attitude toward LGBT rights. While just over one-quarter of the public supported same-sex marriage in 1996, many polls now find that a narrow (but steadily growing) majority approves of marriage equality.

Electoral victories in liberal states like Maine, Maryland and Washington, though certainly harbingers of things to come, do not mean that proponents of same-sex marriage will never again lose a ballot measure. There are still many states where majorities strongly prefer the traditional definition of marriage, and public opinion is not changing equally as fast everywhere. Furthermore, LGBT activists and their allies will find it hard to undo many existing constitutional bans on gay marriage, especially those in states that have complex procedures for constitutional change.

As President Obama declared in his victory speech early Wednesday morning: "It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, abled, disabled, gay or straight. You can make it here in America if you're willing to try." Clearly, the hard efforts of LGBT activists are beginning to pay electoral dividends. Though the path forward will not be easy, it is fair to say that history is bending towards marriage equality.

While President Obama has just won re-election, the bitter and partisan debate over the future of the American health care system is sure to continue. Over the next four years, we will continue to discuss how best to aid the uninsured, reduce health care costs, and improve the health delivery system. Nonetheless, this election represented an important milestone in this ongoing debate. Three points seem especially relevant.

First, the Republican effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (often referred to as ObamaCare) is over. Governor Romney had promised that on day one of his Presidency he would start the repeal and replace process. To be sure, the odds of repeal were never high: Even if the Republicans had taken over the Senate, the Democrats could have filibustered their legislation. But that is one battle that is over before it starts.

Second, the battles over the implementation of the Affordable Care Act are about to heat up, especially those parts of the law which seek to aid the uninsured. For example, the law required states to dramatically expand their Medicaid programs, but the Supreme Court essentially converted that requirement into a state option. Will states like Texas and Florida implement the Medicaid expansion?

Third, the debate over the future of Medicare is sure to continue. While Paul Ryan will not be the vice president, he will continue to lead an effort to change fundamentally the nature of the program, converting it to voucher program. Meanwhile, President Obama will soon appoint the 15 members of the controversial Independent Payment Advisory Board, created by the Affordable Care Act to oversee and ensure Medicare’s ongoing fiscal viability.

So the Affordable Care Act survives. The effort to aid the uninsured continues. The future direction of Medicare remains uncertain. Meanwhile, the health and health care system continues to evolve. The health industry continues to consolidate. There are increased efforts to manage the care of the high cost chronically ill. There is increased focus on public health, primary care and preventive services. The battle over the future of the health system goes on. And the nation has decided that President Obama will continue to lead that effort.

The pundits are currently “slicing and dicing” the electorate to assess how the President won reelection, to paraphrase 2004 Senate candidate Barack Obama. Don’t believe anyone who says “it was X that won the election for Obama”. There wasn’t one single factor that delivered this election for Obama over Romney, but rather many pieces of the puzzle that were necessary, but alone, not sufficient. And one has to go state-by-state to make a full and accurate assessment, as it differs by which battleground state we look at. I think there are at least five factors that led to President Obama’s reelection:

Voters of Color

Without question, everyone is discussing the changing racial and ethnic demographics of America and specifically the growing Latino population. Nationally, non-white voters constituted 28% of the electorate, up from 26% in the 2008 election, and President Obama again won 80% of these voters, according to the exit polls. The President won Latino voters by 44% points over Romney, an 8 point increase from 2008, while 93% of Black voters supported the president, down a notch from the 95% he had in 2008, (but still an 87 point differential). Three out of four Asian voters went for Obama (73%-26%), a significant increase in the president’s Asian support from 2008 (62%-35%). Whites’ share of the electorate decreased 2 percentage points to 72% from 74% overall from 2008 to 2012, although Romney attracted 4% points more white voters than McCain. Said simply, 89% of Romney’s supporters were white (compared to 56% for Obama).

Latinos

Latino voters were crucial and determinative in this election, especially in at least three key swing states: CO, NV and FL. And it is becoming increasingly clear that the Romney campaign misjudged the likelihood that the broad and diverse demographic coalition that Barack Obama assembled in 2008 would be replicated in 2012. They were wrong. Let’s look briefly at these three battleground states.

In Florida, the Latino share of the electorate was higher this year (17%) compared to 2008 (14%), and Obama won Latinos by 22 points in 2012 versus 15 points in 2008, according to exit polls. Of Latino voters, 34% were Cuban, while 57% non-Cuban. In what is a major generational shift that the Republican Party should worry about, Obama won Cubans 49%-47%. Miami-Dade will be the story in Florida if President Obama holds the state, as it accounts for almost all of his margin of victory there in this election. As of now, the president has a roughly 50,000 vote lead in Florida. Obama won Miami-Dade in 2008 by 140,000 votes, while in 2012 he’s leading by 204,000 votes. And this is in a context where Obama lost Independent voters by 1 percent to Romney while he carried them by 7 percentage points over McCain in 2008.

In Colorado, President Obama increased his performance significantly, carrying Latino voters 75% to 23%, compared to 61% to 38% in 2008 versus McCain. In this important swing state which is now dependably blue, Latinos constituted 14% of the electorate, up from 13% in 2008.

In Nevada, the Latino share of the electorate increased to 18% from 15% in 2008, which Obama won 70% to 25%. This was down from the 76% he won in 2008. There is an important interaction between race/ethnicity and labor here, as the major story of Nevada over the last decade is the rise of the Culinary Workers Union (UNITE-HERE Local 226) organizing Latino workers in the casino industry in Las Vegas and mobilizing them politically.

Blacks

One irony of the 2012 campaign is that GOP attempts at voter suppression backfired and led to increased turnout among voters of color. Anger about Republican Party voter suppression efforts arguably helped turn out Black and Latino voters in particular, and they waited with long delays more than other racial or ethnic groups, according to data from a Hart Research Associates election night survey for the AFL-CIO. While 16% of Obama voters waited more than 30 minutes to vote compared to Romney voters, only 9% of white voters did, compared to 22% of Black voters and 24% of Latino voters. Black voters were crucial in several battleground states as well including OH, PA, VA and FL. In OH, Blacks increased their share of the electorate from 11% in 2008 to 15% in 2012, voting overwhelmingly for Obama at 96%. In Florida, Blacks constituted 13% of the electorate, with 95% voting for Obama. And in VA, a state that President Obama didn’t need to win but nonetheless won again, Blacks made up 20% of that state’s electorate, voting 93% for Obama.

Labor

Of course, the labor movement also played a crucial role in Obama’s winning electoral coalition, especially in the rust belt states of OH, WI, MI and PA as well as NV. In most of the rustbelt states (especially the all-important swing state of Ohio), union voters constituted more than 20% of the electorate in Rustbelt states, casting votes 2 out of 3 votes for the president.

Revenge of the Nerds and Big Data

Finally, the role of nerds, geeks and their use of large datasets of voters contributed to the Obama victory over Romney. This is somewhat surprising considering Romney’s past reputation during his reign at Bain Capital as a “data guy.” In fact, as we are now learning, the Obama campaign hired a cadre of sophisticated and highly skilled data geeks to build the largest and most integrated voter database in history, with an incredible amount of micro-level personal data on each individual potential voter. As "TIME" Magazine’s Michael Scherer points out, it was this team of “data crunchers” who figured out the best way to raise small amounts of money from millions of donors, and who kept information up-to-date on who was registered, who was most likely to vote, and what the field operation needed to do to get as many of these voters to the polls. As "New York Times" political-statistical wizard Nate Silver has shown, sophisticated and rigorous quantitative analysis of polling and voting data is the new standard in American politics.