Barack Obama Reelected

Incredible!

“Messy, noisy, and complicated” democracy has returned Barrack Obama as the President of United States of America for the second term in spite of his not-so-eloquent and uninspiring speeches this time round during the campaign and poor performance at the debates.

It’s indeed, an incredible win with 303 electoral-college votes to Romney’s 206, excluding of course Florida, for the economy of the Us is not all that hunky dory with 12 million unemployed in the country, an all-time high budget deficit of 16 trillion, and the ‘fiscal cliff’ that demands corrective action within the coming two months—a none-too-happy situation that can simply throw the American, and also global, economy into chaos.

Nevertheless, his win by the lowest rate of popular vote ever recorded by a 2^nd term elected president—the difference in the popular vote being 2.2 per cent—reveals that the electorate is not all that happy with his first-term performance. Some observers have therefore dubbed it as the failure of Romney’s campaign rather than the win of Obama.

These analysts opine that Romney failed miserably in converting the latent anger flowing across the nation against the persisting unemployment in the country and the absence of economic revival that Obama promised to bring about when elected for the first term, into a vote in his favor. Instead he antagonized women and the other less fortunate lot of the US with his comments: “no equal pay for women”; “rape is sometimes legitimate”; “the unfortunate 47% per cent that live off the government”, which the Obama campaign-team used well to paint a bad picture of Romney, though some consider it unfair.   

On the contrary, Obama and his campaign strategists by going all out with their ‘negative campaign’— instead of talking about what he did as President in the last four years—focused more on attacking Romney at the personal level saying that a person hailing from a wealthy family and a  businessman-turned-politician cannot understand the problems of middle class, accusing Romney of changing his stand on critical issues, coining even a new word, ‘Romnesia’, for this inconsistency, and staying rooted to their ‘ground campaign’ firmly. And, Obama could finally beat Romney in the race to Presidency by securing the votes of the women, of the young Americans, of the Afro-Americans, of the poor and of the Hispanics en masse. 

Some are worrying at the clear divide that has emerged between the States, between gender, race and whatnot in the voting pattern. This is perhaps a clear warning to the Republicans that their age-old ‘Southern-strategy’ of electoral politics will no longer be able to fetch them enough votes to snatch power. They have to invent an all-inclusive strategy for the next election. This emergence of ‘divided America’ would pose a challenge to even Obama, for he has to make a massive effort to reach out to the other divide; else, he is sure to face insurmountable problems in federal deficit-reduction negotiations. Of course, this poses an equal challenge to the Republicans too in the House of Representatives, for any failure to compromise their stand is certain to throw the American economy into chaos, affecting in turn the global economy as well. 

Now that the fight for Presidency is over, Barrack Obama, a known ambitious man, is sure to work towards leaving his legacy behind, which is why it will be no wonder if he goes all out to constitute “a unity cabinet” that consists of Democrats and Republicans—after all, didn’t he do it the last time by letting Gates continue as the Defense Secretary?—aiming to steer America towards the “best [that] is yet to come.”

And that’s what the world will also be looking forward to.