Obama powers to re-election despite weak economy

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama waves as he walks on stage with first lady Michelle Obama and daugh­ters Malia and Sasha at his elec­tion night party Wednesda in Chicago. Obama defeated Repub­li­can chal­lenger for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Car­olyn Kaster)

DAVID ESPO

AP Spe­cial Correspondent

WASHINGTON — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama rolled to re-election Tues­day night, van­quish­ing for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts Gov. Mitt Rom­ney despite a weak econ­omy that plagued his first term and put a crimp in the mid­dle class dreams of mil­lions. In vic­tory, he con­fi­dently promised bet­ter days ahead.

Obama spoke to thou­sands of cheer­ing sup­port­ers in his home­town of Chicago, prais­ing Rom­ney and declar­ing his opti­mism for the next four years. “While our road has been hard, though our jour­ney has been long, we have picked our­selves up, we have fought our way back and we know in our hearts that for the United States of Amer­ica, the best is yet to come,” he said.

Rom­ney made his own grace­ful con­ces­sion speech before a dis­ap­pointed crowd in Boston. He sum­moned all Amer­i­cans to pray for Obama and urged the night’s polit­i­cal win­ners to put par­ti­san bick­er­ing aside and “reach across the aisle” to tackle the nation’s problems.

Still, after the costli­est — and one of the nas­ti­est — cam­paigns in his­tory, divided gov­ern­ment was alive and well.

Democ­rats retained con­trol of the Sen­ate with sur­pris­ing ease.

Repub­li­cans did the same in the House, ensur­ing that Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, Obama’s part­ner in unsuc­cess­ful deficit talks, would reclaim his seat at the bar­gain­ing table.

At Obama head­quar­ters in Chicago, a huge crowd gath­ered wav­ing small Amer­i­can flags and cheer­ing. Sup­port­ers hugged each other, danced and pumped their fists in the air. Excited crowds also gath­ered in New York’s Times Square, at Faneuil Hall in Boston and near the White House in Wash­ing­ton, dri­vers joy­fully honk­ing as they passed by.

With returns from 84 per­cent of the nation’s precincts, Obama had 53.7 mil­lion, 49.6 per­cent of the pop­u­lar vote. Rom­ney had 53 mil­lion, or 48.9 percent.

The president’s laser­like focus on the bat­tle­ground states allowed him to run up a 303–206 mar­gin in the com­pe­ti­tion for the 270 elec­toral votes needed to win the White House, the count that mat­tered most. Remark­ably, given the sour econ­omy, he lost only two states that he cap­tured in 2008, Indi­ana and North Carolina.

Florida, another Obama state four years ago, remained too close to call.

The elec­tion emerged as a choice between two very dif­fer­ent visions of gov­ern­ment — whether it occu­pies a major, front-row place in Amer­i­can lives or is in the back­ground as a less-obtrusive facil­i­ta­tor for pri­vate enter­prise and entrepreneurship.

The econ­omy was rated the top issue by about 60 per­cent of vot­ers sur­veyed as they left their polling places. But more said for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush bore respon­si­bil­ity for cur­rent cir­cum­stances than Obama did after nearly four years in office.

That boded well for the pres­i­dent, who had worked to turn the elec­tion into a choice between his pro­pos­als and Romney’s, rather than a sim­ple ref­er­en­dum on the econ­omy dur­ing his time in the White House.

Unem­ploy­ment stood at 7.9 per­cent on Elec­tion Day, higher than when he took office. And despite signs of progress, the econ­omy is still strug­gling after the worst reces­sion in history.

Obama cap­tured Ohio, Wis­con­sin, Iowa, Vir­ginia, New Hamp­shire, Col­orado and Nevada, seven of the nine states where the rivals and their allies poured nearly $1 bil­lion into duel­ing tele­vi­sion commercials.

Rom­ney won North Car­olina among the bat­tle­ground states.

Florida was too close to call, Obama lead­ing nar­rowly in a state where there were still long lines of vot­ers at some polling places long after the appointed clos­ing time.

Rom­ney, who grew wealthy in busi­ness and ran the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City before enter­ing pol­i­tics, spoke only briefly to sup­port­ers, some of whom wept.

“I so wish that I had been able to ful­fill your hopes to lead the coun­try in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion,” he said. “But the nation chose another leader and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.”

Moments later, Obama stepped before a far dif­fer­ent crowd hun­dreds of miles away.

“Tonight you voted for action, not pol­i­tics as usual,” he said. He pledged to work with lead­ers of both par­ties to help the nation com­plete its recov­ery from the worst reces­sion since the Great Depression.

By any descrip­tion, the list of chal­lenges is daunt­ing — high unem­ploy­ment, a slow-growth econ­omy, soar­ing deficits, a national debt at unsus­tain­able. To say noth­ing of the threat of a nuclear Iran and the men­ace of al-Qaida and other ter­ror­ist groups more than a decade after the attacks of Sept., 11, 2001.

There was no doubt about what drove vot­ers to one can­di­date or the other.

About 4 in 10 said the econ­omy is on the mend, but more than that said it was stag­nant or get­ting worse more than four years after the near-collapse of 2008. The sur­vey was con­ducted for The Asso­ci­ated Press and a group of tele­vi­sion networks.

In the bat­tle for the Sen­ate, Eliz­a­beth War­ren turned Repub­li­can Scott Brown out of office in Mass­a­chu­setts, and Rep. Joe Don­nelly cap­tured a seat from GOP hands in Indiana.

Deb Fis­cher picked up a seat for Repub­li­cans in Nebraska, defeat­ing for­mer Sen. Bob Kerrey.

In Maine, inde­pen­dent for­mer Gov. Angus King was elected to suc­ceed retir­ing GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe. He has not yet said which party he will side with, but Repub­li­cans attacked him in tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing dur­ing the race, and Democ­rats rushed to his cause.

In the pres­i­den­tial race, Obama won in the reli­ably Demo­c­ra­tic North­east and West Coast. Penn­syl­va­nia was his, too, despite two late cam­paign stops by Romney.

Rom­ney won most of the South as well as much of the Rocky Moun­tain West and Farm Belt.

The pres­i­dent was in Chicago as he awaited the vot­ers’ ver­dict on his four years in office. He told reporters he had a con­ces­sion speech as well as vic­tory remarks pre­pared. He con­grat­u­lated Rom­ney on a spir­ited cam­paign. “I know his sup­port­ers are just as engaged, just as enthu­si­as­tic and work­ing just as hard today” as Obama’s own, he added.

Rom­ney rec­i­p­ro­cated, con­grat­u­lat­ing the man who he had cam­paigned against for more than a year.

Ear­lier, he raced to Ohio and Penn­syl­va­nia for Elec­tion Day cam­paign­ing and pro­jected con­fi­dence as he flew home to Mass­a­chu­setts. “We fought to the very end, and I think that’s why we’ll be suc­cess­ful,” he said, adding that he had fin­ished writ­ing a speech antic­i­pat­ing vic­tory but noth­ing if the elec­tion went to his rival.

But the mood soured among the Repub­li­can high com­mand as the votes came in and Obama ground out a lead in crit­i­cal states.

Like Obama, Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was in Chicago as he waited to find out if he was in line for a sec­ond term. Repub­li­can run­ning mate Paul Ryan was with Rom­ney in Boston, although he kept one eye on his re-election cam­paign for a House seat in Wis­con­sin, just in case. He won re-election to Congress.

The long campaign’s cost soared into the bil­lions, much of it spent on neg­a­tive ads, some harshly so.

In a months-long gen­eral elec­tion ad war that cost nearly $1 bil­lion, Rom­ney and Repub­li­can groups spent more than $550 mil­lion and Obama and his allies $381 mil­lion, accord­ing to orga­ni­za­tions that track advertising.

Accord­ing to the exit poll, 53 per­cent of vot­ers said Obama was more in touch with peo­ple like them, com­pared to 43 per­cent for Romney.

About 60 per­cent said taxes should be increased, tak­ing sides on an issue that divided the pres­i­dent and Rom­ney. Obama wants to let taxes rise on upper incomes, while Rom­ney does not.

Other than the bat­tle­grounds, big states were vir­tu­ally ignored in the final months of the cam­paign. Rom­ney wrote off New York, Illi­nois and Cal­i­for­nia, while Obama made no attempt to carry Texas, much of the South or the Rocky Moun­tain region other than Colorado.

There were 33 Sen­ate seats on the bal­lot, 23 of them defended by Democ­rats and the rest by Republicans.

Demo­c­ra­tic Rep. Chris Mur­phy, a Demo­c­rat, won a Con­necti­cut seat long held by Sen. Joe Lieber­man, retir­ing after a career that included a vice pres­i­den­tial spot on Al Gore’s ticket in 2000. It was Repub­li­can Linda McMahon’s sec­ond defeat in two tries, at a per­sonal cost of $92 million.

The GOP needed a gain of three for a major­ity if Rom­ney won, and four if Obama was re-elected. Nei­ther Major­ity Leader Harry Reid of Nevada nor GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Ken­tucky was on the bal­lot, but each had high stakes in the outcome.

All 435 House seats were on the bal­lot, includ­ing five where one law­maker ran against another as a result of once-a-decade redis­trict­ing to take pop­u­la­tion shifts into account. Democ­rats needed to pick up 25 seats to gain the major­ity they lost two years ago.

House Speaker Boehner, R-Ohio, raised mil­lions to finance get-out-the-vote oper­a­tions in states with­out a robust pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, New York, Illi­nois and Cal­i­for­nia among them. His goal was to min­i­mize any losses, or pos­si­bly even gain ground, no mat­ter Romney’s fate. House Demo­c­ra­tic leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi of Cal­i­for­nia cam­paigned aggres­sively, as well, and faced an uncer­tain polit­i­cal future after her party failed to win control.

In guber­na­to­r­ial races, Repub­li­cans picked up North Car­olina, where Pat McCrory won eas­ily. The incum­bent, Demo­c­ra­tic Gov. Bev Pur­due, did not seek re-election.

In a cam­paign that tra­versed con­tested Repub­li­can pri­maries last win­ter and spring, a pair of polit­i­cal con­ven­tions this sum­mer and three pres­i­den­tial debates, Obama, Rom­ney, Biden and Ryan spoke at hun­dreds of ral­lies, were ser­e­naded by Bruce Spring­stein and Meat Loaf and washed down ham­burg­ers, pizza, bar­be­cue and bur­rito bowls.

Obama was elected the first black pres­i­dent in 2008, and four years later, Rom­ney became the first Mor­mon to appear on a gen­eral elec­tion bal­lot. Yet one man’s race and the other’s reli­gion were never major fac­tors in this year’s cam­paign for the White House, a race dom­i­nated from the out­set by the economy.

Over and over, Obama said that dur­ing his term the nation had begun to recover from the worst reces­sion since the Great Depres­sion. While he con­ceded progress had been slow, he accused Rom­ney of offer­ing recy­cled Repub­li­can poli­cies that have helped the wealthy and harmed the mid­dle class in the past and would do so again.

Rom­ney coun­tered that a sec­ond Obama term could mean a repeat reces­sion in a coun­try where eco­nomic growth has been weak and unem­ploy­ment is worse now than when the pres­i­dent was inau­gu­rated. A wealthy for­mer busi­ness­man, he claimed the knowl­edge and the skills to put in place poli­cies that would make the econ­omy healthy again.

In a race where the two men dis­agreed often, one of the prin­ci­pal fault lines was over taxes. Obama cam­paigned for the renewal of income tax cuts set to expire on Dec. 31 at all income lev­els except above $200,000 for indi­vid­u­als and $250,000 for couples.

Rom­ney said no one’s taxes should go up in uncer­tain eco­nomic times. In addi­tion, he pro­posed a 20 per­cent cut across the board in income tax rates but said he would end or cur­tail a vari­ety of tax breaks to make sure fed­eral deficits didn’t rise.

The dif­fer­ences over taxes, the econ­omy, Medicare, abor­tion and more were expressed in intensely neg­a­tive advertising.

Obama launched first, shortly after Rom­ney dis­patched his Repub­li­can foes in his quest for the party nomination.

One mem­o­rable com­mer­cial showed Rom­ney singing an off-key ren­di­tion of “Amer­ica The Beau­ti­ful.” Pic­tures and signs scrolled by say­ing that his com­pa­nies had shipped jobs to Mex­ico and China, that Mass­a­chu­setts state jobs had gone to India while he was gov­er­nor and that he has per­sonal invest­ments in Switzer­land, Bermuda and the Cay­man Islands.

Rom­ney spent less on adver­tis­ing than Obama. A col­lec­tion of out­side groups made up the dif­fer­ence, some of them oper­at­ing under rules that allowed donors to remain anony­mous. Most of the ads were of the attack vari­ety. But the Repub­li­can National Com­mit­tee relied on one that had a far softer touch, and seemed aimed at vot­ers who had been drawn to the excite­ment caused by Obama’s first cam­paign. It referred to a grow­ing national debt and unem­ploy­ment, then said, “He tried. You tried. It’s OK to make a change.”

More than 30 mil­lion vot­ers cast early bal­lots in nearly three dozen states, a reflec­tion of the grow­ing appeal of get­ting a jump on the tra­di­tional Elec­tion Day.

Posted by AP News on Nov 7 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.