It's time to think Big.

Well, Mitt Romney came close to coming close to winning, but not quite close and certainly not close enough to win.  As it turns out, only those states (Indiana and North Carolina) in 2008 where the President received less than half the vote ended up flipping to Mitt Romney.  Every other state, including the all-important Ohio, Florida, and Virginia ended up tipping to Obama.  But even if Romney had carried these states his losing percentages in those Remainder states (Iowa, New Hampshire, and Colorado) which I mentioned in my last post, would have re-elected President Obama anyway.  He won them all.  So.... it really wasn't close.

Election 2012 clearly broke some, "rules," of American politics.  In almost every successful re-election campaign of the past half-century, the President's party usually picks up a few seats in the House and loses two in the Senate.  It happened with Nixon in 1972, with Reagan in 1984, and even with Bill Clinton in 1996, the voters clearly voting the status quo but cutting out the excesses of both parties.  In 2012, the Democrats did make some gains in the House, perhaps as many as 8 seats, but contrary to historical precedent, the Democrats actually gained 2 seats in the Senate putting them in a much stronger position to retain control in 2014 and beyond.  With their new 55 seat majority compared with 45 Republicans the GOP is guaranteed nothing, whereas if they had managed to achieve the historic average gain of 2 seats (Dems 51 and GOP 49) the next 2 years would have been shadowed by the reasonable assumption that the Democrats (defending 20 seats, many in vulnerable territory) were destined to lose in 2014, no matter what events transpired in Washington, D.C. or around the world.

So the Democrats really did defy the historical trend.

Another rule that seemed to be cast in considerable doubt in 2012 was that undecided voters always break for the challenger at the end of the campaign.  The result this time was mixed.  In states where Romney was ahead, almost all the late deciders DID break for Romney.  The President gained no more than half of 1 percent of the undecideds in these states.  Where the President led before the election, however, the result was the exact opposite.  Even in the swing states, almost all the undecided votes broke for Obama.  So it may be that, in the future, these voters do break all one way or the other in each state, but not necessarily nation-wide.  The challenger can no longer be assumed to have the advantage.

It's also important, I think, at this juncture to point out that not all polls are alike.  The media's willingness to accept a weighted average of ALL the polls as an accurate predictor is a sham.  And what is more, THEY KNOW IT.  Not all polls are equal.  Some have a better predictive value than others, and the only way to get an accurate reading is to compare polls by the same pollster to each other and watch to see if the percent change from day to day, week to week, month to month, between one pollster and another, is the same and in the same direction.  Americans have got to understand (and I think a great many of them DO) that the Press bias our political system by telling voters some interesting things that are almost certainly not true.  That in order to maintain the interest of their readership they have become lax in their commitment to the facts and the truth.  You can almost hear them argue: "Well, who can say really, what the truth is?" and so they'll report anything to get people's attention.  Americans need to keep in mind the press is part of the system and they bias their reports with sensationalism and controversy.

Still, outside of the Senate result, this really was a status-quo election very similar to the others I cited.  Despite how typical party-line voting has become in the last decade or so, Republicans retained control of the U.S. House of Representatives by a higher margin than any they achieved in the 1990's or during the Bush Presidency.  Considering that Democrats believed the President's coattails might actually bring back their majority in the House and actually did achieve significant gains in California, Illinois, and New York, only underscores this achievement by Republicans.

The chief difference is the President's party clearly made just about all the gains in this election.  Gains in the Senate.  Gains in the House.  Victories for legalizing gay-marriage narrowly won in 3 states (Maryland, Maine,  breaking the perfect winning streak for gay-marriage opponents) and a Minnesota initiative to place traditional marriage in that state's Constitution was defeated by 1 percentage point.  But the only gains made by Republicans were in the South where the GOP finally took control of the legislature in Arkansas, the last of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy where Democrats were still in the majority.  But even there Democrats made gains since 2010 in states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona where Republican majorities were paired back a bit.

But the most startling fact the election of 2012 is fewer Americans actually voted in 2012 than did so in 2008.  Considering how contentious this election campaign has been that is remarkable and it says to me that Americans really are looking for something new.

I am a firm believer that something has been missing from our politics in the last 20 years.  Ever since the end of the Cold War, it's as if America has lost it's way.  It's political institutions have not kept up with the needs of its voters.  We may really be trending towards an end to competitive elections in America.  I still think there are opportunities for change but the Republican leadership is particularly ill-suited to taking advantage of them and I suspect they will learn all the wrong lessons from these election results.  We need a competitive two-party system, not a system where 2 parties advocate the same things.

It's time to think Big.