US President Barack Obama swept to re-election Tuesday,November 6, creating history again by defying the undertow of a slow economicrecovery and high unemployment to beat Republican foe Mitt Romney. Obama becameonly the second Democrat to win a second four-year White House term since WorldWar II, when television networks projected he would win the bellwether state ofOhio where he had staged a pitched battle with Romney.
A grueling and often unpleasant campaign yielded, in the end,a decisive victory, built on the strong foundations laid down months before by hiscrack campaign team.
Here are some of the keys to Obama’s win over RepublicanMitt Romney.
The economy was just good enough
The economy, despite tepid growth rates and highunemployment, was not bad enough to doom Obama, and he appears to have finallyreceived belated credit for halting the slide into a second Great Depression.When he took office in January 2009, the economy was losing 700,000 jobs amonth, and while Americans are still dissatisfied with the economy, exit pollssuggest they still blame ex-president George W. Bush as much as Obama.
You’re so Bain
The Obama campaign made a gamble soon after Romney capturedthe Republican primary -- to go negative. Searing Obama ads and rhetoric brandedthe former investment manager a corporate vulture, who bought and sold firmsfor his own profit and heartlessly put good Americans out of work or shippedtheir jobs overseas. The plan was to define Romney in a harsh light before hehad the chance to introduce himself to Americans with a multimillion dollarblitz of television advertising in the swing states, like Ohio, which would decidethe election.
The Bin Laden bounce
The killing of Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in a daring NavySEAL raid in 2011 did not win Obama re-election. But it bolstered the image ofthe president as a steely commander-in-chief who kept Americans safe anddefused the classic Republican attack that Democrats are weak and cannot betrusted on national security.
The Obama Machine
For the second election running, Obama’s campaign team hasreinvented the way presidential elections are won. In 2008, Obama’s politicalbraintrust, led by the intense David Plouffe, outwitted the political machineof Bill and Hillary Clinton with a delegate collection strategy that redefinedthe way primary campaigns are won.
This time around, they defied the strong headwinds of aslowly growing economy and re-elected their president in the face of ferociousRepublican opposition. The path to victory lay in the most sophisticated votertargeting and turnout machine in history, which reached all the way down toneighborhoods and was constructed over several years. According to exit polls,93 percent of African Americans backed Obama, along with 69 percent of Latinosand 70 percent of Jewish voters, and he was able to limit his losses amongwhite voters. Obama also won an important victory among unmarried women voters,68 percent of whom backed him.
