The pit in our collective stomachs is gone. Tuesday morning we were quietly pensive. Now, we are just as quietly relieved. It seems we’ve been through too much to do much more than give thanks.
Tuesday morning we faced the very real prospects of losing almost-universal health care, a woman’s right to her body, a new President who doesn’t yet believe in Global Warming, no champion of our wounded-in-more-ways-than-most-of-us-could-ever-understand veterans and a slew of other bogeymen, real or imagined.
On Election Day, President Obama was re-elected, in the Senate, we have an honest to goodness liberal, proud of her intellectualism in Elizabeth Warren, and a Kennedy is in Congress. Instead of a President who is steadfastly against gay marriage, we have one who ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and four states ratified amendments to legalize gay marriage after it was defeated in state elections across the country thirty-two straight times. Who would have thunk it?
For those of you who voted Republican yesterday, fear not. Your rights are not in danger, you have the House by a large margin, and Romney’s economic plan was never quite definitive, anyway.
In the end, Tuesday’s election results were about a major change in the country’s demographics. In 1988, George Herbert Walker Bush won 60% of the white vote and 426 electoral votes. In 2012, Governor Romney won 59% of the electoral votes, yet only garnered 206 electoral votes. President Obama won 39% of the white vote, and was re-elected into office.
How has demographics changed in the last 25 years? The percentage of minority votes Governor Dukakis carried in 1988 was not that different than Obama’s. Dukakis won 89% of the African-American vote, compared to Obama’s 93%. Last night Obama won 71% of Hispanic vote to Dukakis’s 70%. The President also earned 73% of the Asian vote.
Our country is simply more non-white than it’s ever been. In our view it means a more diverse, empathetic, population. We’ve changed for the better.
By R. Harvey Bravman, Publisher
