Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond (63 page)

This proved to be entirely wrong, as the best pollsters knew it would be. In fact, exit polls found that the makeup of the 2012 electorate was even
more
congenial to Obama than 2008’s had been.
Voters ages 18–29 had made up 18 percent of the 2008 electorate, only 12 percent of the 2010 electorate, but 19 percent of the 2012 electorate. Nonwhites made up 26 percent of the 2008 electorate, 23 percent of the 2010 electorate, but 28 percent of the 2012 electorate. The Obama constituency had mobilized after all. Indeed, the percentage of eligible African-American voters who went to the polls exceeded that of whites, and the African-American vote appeared to increase in battlegrounds such as Ohio and Virginia. Voter suppression efforts not only backfired; they increased the determination of African-Americans to cast ballots. If the reduction in early voting hours meant having to stand in longer lines, this is what they did.

And Romney paid dearly for his anti-immigration comments in the primaries, including his unforgettable “self-deportation” idea. Not only was the Latino share of the electorate up from 2008, but in an election where Obama’s overall support dropped by 2 percentage points, he saw his percentage of the Latino vote rise by 4.
Romney’s 27 percent of the Latino vote was the lowest for a Republican since 1996—and a warning sign that the party’s nativist noises could keep it uncompetitive in presidential elections for years to come.

Even more shocking for Republicans was Obama’s 73 percent share of the Asian-American vote, up from 62 percent four years earlier. Historically, Asian-Americans had been open to Republican candidates. Even in defeat in 1992,
George H. W. Bush had secured 55 percent of the Asian-American vote against Bill Clinton, according to the network exit poll. Here again, the costs of nativism to the Republicans were evident, and perhaps also the costs of the highly visible public role played by the more extreme among the older, white, conservative Christians in the Tea Party.

The diversity of the American electorate made an even bigger difference to Obama in 2012 than in 2008 because his share of the white vote declined, from 43 percent in 2008 to 39 percent in 2012. Obama’s percentage of the white vote was lower than Michael Dukakis’s share in his 1988 defeat, as Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin noted in a careful analysis of the election. The vast demographic changes in the country that had been important to Obama’s election were essential to his reelection.
One clear warning sign for Democrats: Obama, who had lost white college graduates by only 4 points in 2008, lost them by 14 in 2012. And his deficit among white working-class voters rose from 18 points in 2008 to 25 points in 2012.

However, his share of the white vote generally and white working-class vote in particular was significantly higher in swing and industrial states such as Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. In general, Obama’s vote among whites was much higher in states where he actively campaigned and advertised. On the other hand, among white southerners, according to
New York Times
voting analyst Nate Cohn,
Obama won only 28 percent. And in the Deep South states—Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas—he won just 16 percent among white voters. The new Solid South was as Republican as ever. The two southern states Obama carried, Florida and Virginia, have seen large-scale in-migration of non-southerners and were the least culturally southern states in the South. North Carolina, which he carried narrowly in 2008 and lost narrowly in 2012, had similarly been transformed by immigration from outside the South and outside the country.

Finally, the exit polls left no doubt that if the 2012 election was in large part a war over class issues, Obama won it handily. The pollsters asked voters
if they thought the policies of each candidate would “generally favor” the rich, the middle class, or the poor. Their ruling on Obama: only 10 percent said his policies favored the rich, 44 percent said his policies favored the middle class, and 31 percent said they favored the poor. Obama overwhelmingly won the last two groups. Romney’s numbers were very different: 54 percent said his policies favored the rich while only 34 percent said they favored the middle class. A paltry 2 percent said Romney’s policies favored the poor.
Especially important was Obama’s 10-point advantage over Romney as the candidate of the middle class. Game and match to Obama.

Moreover, a majority of voters rejected a core Republican proposition: that the economy works on behalf of everyone. The voters were asked: “Do you think the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy, or is fair to most Americans?”
The exit poll found that 55 percent said the economy favors the wealthy, while only 39 percent said it was fair to most Americans. Romney won three-quarters of the ballots of those who thought the economy was fair; Obama won nearly as big a margin within the larger group that said it favored the wealthy.

Thus did Obama become the first Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt to win two consecutive elections with a majority of the vote. His share was down, and so was his total: from 69.5 million votes in 2008 to 65.9 million in 2012. But most of his losses appear to have come from past supporters who abstained rather than from those who switched to Mitt Romney. Romney received only 948,667 more votes than John McCain had four years earlier, and, appropriately perhaps, 47 percent of the vote. (Libertarian Gary Johnson won 1.275 million votes, while Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, won just under 470,000.)

Democrats did very well in the Senate races, picking up two seats. The struggles Akin and Mourdock had in discussing rape explained some of the Democrats’ strength. But their Senate victories were comprehensive. They had the satisfaction of seeing Scott Brown, who caused them so much grief in 2010, defeated by Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard professor who had perfected populist language and policies. Even before her election, she had become the most powerful progressive voice in national life. Democrats not only won competitive races in Virginia, Ohio, and Connecticut, but also won
contests in North Dakota and Montana, states where Obama was soundly beaten.

They were less fortunate in the House.
Democratic House candidates outpolled Republicans by 1.4 million votes nationwide, but gerrymandering and the packing of Democrats in urban districts meant that this lead translated into only 201 seats, to 234 for the Republicans—a Democratic gain of just 8 seats. The effects of the gerrymander were especially pronounced in states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, where Republicans won a much larger share of seats than they did votes. In Pennsylvania, to pick a particularly stark case, Democrats edged out Republicans in the popular vote in all House races, but they won only 5 seats to the Republicans’ 13. The cost of losing control of states in midterm elections right before redistricting years was very high.

The long-term trend toward a steadily less white electorate in the presidential years bodes well for the Democrats in battles for the White House. But the wide variation in the makeup of presidential and midterm electorates points to the likelihood of sharply divergent outcomes between presidential years and off-years for some time to come. The United States Election Project found that
40 million fewer Americans voted in 2010 than in 2012. And at 48 million, the drop-off from 2012 to 2014 was even more dramatic. This trend is likely to continue until much of the current Millennial generation reaches its mid-thirties or early forties, the time in life when most people begin to develop more stable residential habits (which, because of complicated voter registration rules in many states, makes regular voting easier) and a higher degree of ongoing political engagement.

This rise of the two electorates will lead to more gridlock in Washington until the Republicans moderate, or until one or both parties fully adapt to the new demographic realties. The Democrats’ task is to increase their share of the white working-class vote and also their percentages among voters over the age of 65, who loom very large in the midterms. The second may, to at least some degree, happen naturally: the next group of Americans approaching retirement is somewhat more liberal and Democratic than current retirees. Obama lost those over 65 by 8 points to John McCain and by 12 points to Mitt Romney. But among voters ages 45 to 64,
Obama led McCain by a point in 2008 and trailed Romney by only 4 in 2012.

For Republicans, restoring their ability to win presidential elections almost certainly depends on cutting their deep losses among nonwhites. There are many reasons why the African-American vote is likely to remain overwhelmingly Democratic for some time to come, although Obama’s share is certainly a peak, much as the Democrats’ share of the Catholic vote peaked in John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960. But the GOP’s opportunity among Latinos is much greater, as George W. Bush showed in 2000 and 2004. And the party must certainly do better among Asian-Americans, who include many nationalities that once had an affinity for the party.

After Romney’s loss, some conservatives argued that there was nothing wrong with the party that couldn’t be cured by an even higher share of the white vote. On its face, this seems absurd, given that the white vote will continue to decline as a share of the electorate—and since it is difficult to imagine the Democratic share of the white vote falling much lower than it did in 2012.

But there is a strain of something important in this line of analysis, as the respected voting analyst Sean Trende has shown. One of the most important facts about 2012 was the decline in white voting. Trende estimates that some
5 million fewer whites voted in 2012 than in 2008. Most of them lived in the North and were less well-to-do.

Trende’s analysis pointed, first, to the downside of nominating a venture capitalist after a Wall Street–induced crash, the costs of Romney’s 47 percent comment and other statements that made him appear out of touch, and the success of both his Republican foes and the Obama campaign in branding him as an enemy of working-class aspirations. It seems likely that Obama’s advertising and messaging—typified by the succinct summary of the case against Romney he offered in the second debate—may have led voters in this group who could not vote for his reelection to stay home. But the missing downscale whites also pointed to the larger cost of the Republicans’ ties to corporate interests, tax policies that favor the wealthy, and their growing economic radicalism. Appealing to these missing white voters, Trende argued, “means abandoning some of its more pro-corporate stances.” He went on: “This GOP would have to be more ‘America first’ on trade, immigration and foreign policy; less pro–Wall Street and big business in its rhetoric; more Main Street/populist on economics.” It would be a complicated
mix, but Trende identifies the same working-class problem for conservatives that emerged during the primaries, and that Obama exploited so effectively. When Donald Trump ran for president, he campaigned as if he had read Trende’s analysis.

There is another challenge—to the political system generally and to Republicans in particular—that arises from the emergence of the two electorates and the dominance of Republicans in the House of Representatives.
The political scientist Thomas Schaller identified it in his important 2015 book,
The Stronghold.
Republicans, he said, were in the process of becoming “a party anchored to and defined by its congressional wing, and its House caucus in particular.” Schaller sees in this a potential vicious cycle for Republicans. As the party became more conservative, it also became more Congress-centered. But as the party relies more and more on its congressional stronghold, it is likely to become
more conservative still,
given the number of Republicans who represent very conservative districts, and another large group that fears primaries from the right and the ongoing pressures from right-wing donors and media. The danger, said Schaller, is that the GOP’s congressional stronghold could become a “chokehold.” He was referring to the chokehold on the party, but we are in danger of its becoming a chokehold on governing itself.

“Interesting things happen in the fourth quarter.”

Obama spoke over and over during the 2012 campaign of how his victory might finally “break the fever” in Washington. If the Republicans had operated during his first four years with the sole purpose of foiling his program and defeating him, they might see in his reelection a sign that the voters had rejected their approach. They might try something different. Surely two consecutive presidential majorities would mean something for him, as they had for Ronald Reagan.

The first order of business after the election was the matter of Bush’s expiring tax cuts. Obama had kicked the issue down the road, partly from perceived political necessity and partly because tax increases during a sluggish recovery did not seem wise. But he had drawn the line on 2012. And his hand was strong. Unless Congress gave him a bill that he could sign, it would be enabling one of the largest tax increases in history. Taxes across the board would rise as all the Bush tax cuts expired. Obama was seeking only the
restoration of the higher tax rates of the Clinton era for families earning more than $250,000 a year.

Between Obama’s theory of the fever breaking and Schaller’s theory of a vicious cycle, the vicious cycle largely prevailed. House Speaker Boehner’s caucus was no less unruly after the election than it had been before. Boehner continued to resist any deal that Obama could plausibly reach, and the Speaker could not get Republicans to accept that failing to act meant a huge tax increase. He tried to push through his own “Plan B,” providing for tax increases only for those earning more than $1 million a year. Even that was unacceptable to his members. His most radical members continued to assert their right to use any means at their disposal to impose their views on the country. But in the process, they marginalized the House from any serious negotiations. It would fall to Democrats to get something done with a rump of Republicans. That was kind of, sort of, like breaking the fever—but only when Obama was wielding a mighty weapon of a large tax increase no Republican could stomach. The situation recalled George H. W. Bush’s 1990 deficit reduction deal with Democrats after a conservative rebellion had brought down his initial bill. Little had changed, except that Bush’s defeat only hardened the conservative view. Obama was living with the results.