The Platform: Recapping the Election That Kept Obama in Office Posted by Nathan S. on 11/07/12 | Filed under Opinion, Politics, The Platform

For the next few weeks, Refined Hype and political-economic analysis blog Nitro Citizen have hosted The Platform, a series in which contributors from RH, Nitro, and the music industry comment on the structure of politics and how we are affected by what's on the ballot.

As Obama said in his acceptance speech last night, while the election may be over, the hard and sometimes painful work of fufillling America's potential is just beginning - that work never really ends. So my thanks to everyone who contributed to this series and everyone who read these pieces.

Below the homies Dharmic X for RefinedHype, BroadNMarket for Nitro Citizen offer their final thoughts. Enjoy...

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Dharmic X (RefinedHype)

President Obama’s victory in the 2012 election came with tremendous amounts of hype and online celebration, but it really wasn’t a major shocker. What people may not have realized in the wake of the first debate was that the polls that showed Obama trailing Romney were only a reflection of the popular vote, and not the electoral college which actually determines who wins the Presidency. This means that even if Obama had lost the popular vote (and at most points of the night it did appear like he was going to), as long as he had the required 270 electoral votes, he would still be elected President (the last election where this scenario took place was the infamous 2000 race between Bush and Gore). As for electoral projections pre-election day, while Romney and the Republicans did try to make headway in key battleground states to secure the required electoral votes, they ultimately trailed Obama in most polls in these states (such as Wisconsin) throughout the campaign.

Nate Silver breaks it down pretty well. Romney never stood a chance.

Ultimately, it was encouraging to see that voter turnout in typically underrepresented constituencies (minorities and youth) was even higher in 2012 than it was in the historic 2008 election. Some of the apathy that we’ve seen in the past seems to be wearing off. But in order for meaningful change to take place in this nation and to right the ship, this same voting bloc needs to do exactly what MTV News writer Rob Markman claims he will do. He pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.

There needs to be a sustained momentum from this election, because one look at the results on a congressional and local scale tells us that the gridlock on Capitol Hill will continue to be a problem for these upcoming four years (or at least for the next two). The Democrats seem to have slightly increased their majority in the Senate, but while they definitely made inroads on the House side, the Republicans are still in power (Paul Ryan managed to secure his seat in the House rather easily). The House will continue to be a zoo of hyper-conservatism, and now the Senate has lost several bipartisan, moderate Republicans to bridge the chasm in both houses in Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, and Scott Brown. Knowing the Republican Party’s nature to double-back on its party’s more-extreme elements in the wake of a setback (ie. the Tea Party’s rise post-2008), it looks like there will be a lot of stalemate in Congress, perhaps more so than usual.

On a final note, one important battle to focus on as we get closer to 2014 is the universal mandate that is required nationwide as part of the Affordable Care Act. There is a possibility that the President and his Administration will be forced to spend significant amounts of time on enforcing and implementing this provision, especially in the wake of this election. As I pointed out, four states put the implementation of the mandate within their state up to a ballot vote, and the results were not a good omen for the Obama Administration. Only voters in Florida rejected the proposal, leaving potential court showdowns with the remaining four states which seem hell bent on circumventing this contested portion of health care reform. Health care will likely once again become a hot button issue come the 2014 election, and if things stall like they did during the passing of legislation itself, brace yourself for a rehash of the 2010 election.

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BroadNMarket (Nitro Citizen)

While I agree with Dharmic that Obama had the advantage all along, the reason that this result helped many of us breathe a sigh of relief (especially considering how early it was called) was the fact that most battleground polls were still within the margin of error down to the last few days. Romney could have been slightly ahead in most places for two months. We know now that he wasn't.

I was hoping for this outcome. It appears that President Obama has carefully structured incentives for action in his second term - the sequester, being under credit rating agencies' microscope, and CEO calls for a Simpson-Bowles package suggest that tax reform, or at least deficit reduction, isn't far off on the horizon. If the president champions immigration reform, he can try to rebuild a bridge with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). If he wants to tackle climate change, Mayor Bloomberg and a host of others will help him make that case.

Perhaps the most interesting early call for bridge building came from Bloomberg contributor Ramesh Ponnuru, who suggested that the president appoint Romney to head up his proposed Department of Business. While the president will be forced into a frenzy of action during this lame duck period, his appointments - whenever he gets around to them - will have plenty of implications for his ability to achieve the goals of his second term. The Bowles in "Simpson-Bowles" could well become our next Secretary of the Treasury and push for a balanced deficit package that takes some tax raises to get more in spending cuts. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) may get called up to smooth over the under siege Department of State, in which case the newly defeated Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) could head back to the Senate and give Republicans another moderate voice as they regroup for even tougher demographic challenges in 2014 and 2016.

Ultimately, our country is still at a crossroads. We have chosen to follow the path that President Obama has laid out for us, and we have rejected the vision that both primary Mitt and moderate Mitt had proposed. Marijuana is legal in Colorado and Washington. Marriage equality has been brought to Maine, Maryland, and Washington for the first time as a result of popular votes. But the two-party system may well keep us at a stalemate for another four years. If the Republicans were willing to jettison two years to make President Obama a one-term president, they might just be crazy enough to forfeit six and send his legacy to the gutter while praying for deliverance. Either way, perhaps the most disappointing stat of the night was that the best-performing third-party candidate - Libertarian Gary Johnson - received only about 1% of the popular vote. Johnson was openly hoping for 5% to gain access to federal campaign financing and to be automatically placed on ballots in all 50 states in 2016. This was an election decided by razor-thin margins in terms of the popular vote. Both major parties clearly have significant vulnerabilities right now, and alternative parties may well be able to siphon support in successive elections. And there appeared to be many signals of shifts in voter preferences.

For those of us who stand behind Obama with reservations (considering drone use, drug policy, debt accumulation, deportation, indefinite detention, SOPA/PIPA, the Patriot Act, protectionism, and a host of other factors) we see an opening in this squeaker of an election. We are hopeful that the figures of the future won't bear much resemblance to even the best we have to offer today.

See Also: The Platform: Exploring Independent Politics