Victory and Vindication

I saw the quote below in today's New York Times. I take it as personal vindication of a belief I have held for as long as I've been aware of the landscape of American politics.

"It is time to sit down practically and say where are we going to add pieces to our coalition. There just are not enough middle-aged white guys that we can scrape together to win. There's just not enough of them."

TOM DAVIS, former Republican member of Congress.

For years I've pointed out to anyone who would listen that the GOP is a minority party with a monolithic structure based on wealth and race while the Democratic party is a majority coalition of groups with diverse goals and objectives. I've argued that the Republicans have used wedge issues to divide and conquer what should be an overwhelming Democratic majority.

So long as the Democratic party failed to find a message or a candidate compelling enough to unite its diverse factions, the GOP could cobble together a majority by adding conservative, middle-aged, white men to Democrats and Independents sporting "GOP wedgies."

It was a blueprint, which worked flawlessly for years, but it went up in smoke on November 6, 2012 with the re-election of Barack Hussein Obama as President of The United States of America.

Here's why.

The 2012 Republican campaign message boiled down to this:

1. Middle-aged white guys are the "job creators and makers"

2. These "job creators" deserve to control not only the country but also the lives of the "takers," the 47% of Americans who need to learn how to take responsibility for their own lives.

Ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, and young people of all ethnicities got that message and rejected it. They backed Barack Obama by large margins, not because he looked more like them, but because he shared their belief in a government whose policies were responsive to the problems faced by a diverse populace instead of one which catered to the wishes of the wealthiest few among us. There were simply not enough angry, middle-aged white guys to overcome that surge; and, given the trends in population growth and change, it's unlikely that there ever will be again.

Those who see the 2012 election solely as a win for the Democratic party and a loss for the GOP are missing the bigger picture. This election was a victory for all Americans, including the angry, middle-class, white guys, who opposed the President so adamantly.

They now must make a choice. Instead of acting as the devinely-entitled, masters they thought themselves to be, they must learn how to function as co-equal members within a diverse society. It's an opportunity they rarely gave to those over whom they exercised power.

If they choose this path, this election will result in a stronger America capable of facing the challenges of an uncertain future. If they fail to seize the opportunity and instead cling to the myths by which they set their course in the past, they face the prospect of becoming irrelevant in future elections, and America will be worse off for it.

In either case, the sound of the phrase We the People from the Preamble to the United States Constitution has never before rung as true as it does today.