Democrats hail election victory and the promise of four more years
Barack Obama was re- elected president of the United States on Tuesday, overcoming powerful economic headwinds, a lock- step resistance to his agenda by Republicans in Congress and an unprecedented torrent of advertising as a divided nation voted to give him more time.
In defeating Mitt Romney, the president carried Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Virginia and Wisconsin, a near sweep of the battleground states, and was holding a narrow advantage in Florida. The path to victory for Romney narrowed as the night wore along, with Obama winning at least 303 electoral votes.
A cheer of jubilation sounded at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago when the television networks began projecting him as the winner at 8: 20 p. m. Pacifi c time, even as the ballots were still being counted in many states where voters had waited in line well into the night. The victory was narrower than in his historic election four years ago, but it was no less dramatic.
“Tonight in this election, you, the American people, reminded us
that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back,” Obama said early Wednesday. “We know in our hearts that for the United States of America, the best is yet to come.”
Obama’s re- election extended his place in history, carrying the tenure of the nation’s first black president into a second term. His path followed a pattern that has been an arc to his political career: faltering when he seemed to be at his strongest— the period before his first debate with Romney — before he redoubled his efforts to lift himself and his supporters to victory.
The evening was not without the drama that has come to mark so many recent elections: For more than 90 minutes after the networks projected Obama as the winner, Romney held off calling him to concede. And as the president waited to declare victory in Chicago, Romney’s aides were prepared to head to the airport, suitcases packed, potentially to contest several close results.
But as it became increasingly clear that no amount of contesting would bring him victory, he called Obama to concede shortly before 10 p. m. Pacific time.
“I wish all of them well, but particularly the president, the first lady and their daughters,” Romney told his supporters in Boston. “This is a time of great challenges for America, and I pray that the president will be successful in guiding our nation.”
Latinos made up an important part of Obama’s winning coalition, preliminary exit poll data showed. And before the night was through there were already recriminations from Republican moderates who said Romney had gone too far during the primaries in his statements against those here illegally, including his promise that his get- tough policies would cause some to “self deport.”
Obama, 51, faces governing in a deeply divided country and a partisan- rich capital, where Republicans retained their majority in the House and Democrats kept their control of the Senate. His re- election offers him a second chance that will quickly be tested, given the rapidly escalating fiscal showdown.
For Obama, the result brings a ratification of his sweeping health care act, which Romney had vowed to repeal. The law will now continue on course toward nearly full implementation in 2014, promising to significantly change the way medical services are administrated nationwide.
Confident that the economy is finally on a true path toward stability, Obama and his aides have hinted that he would seek to tackle some of the grand but unrealized promises of his first campaign, including the sort of immigration overhaul that has eluded presidents of both parties for decades.
But he will be venturing back into a congressional environment similar to that of his first term, with the Senate under the control of Democrats and the House under the control of Republicans, whose leaders have hinted that they will be no less likely to challenge him than they were during the past four years.
The state- by- state pursuit of 270 electoral votes was being closely tracked by both campaigns, with Romney winning North Carolina and Indiana, which Obama carried four years ago. But Obama won Michigan, the state where Romney was born, and Minnesota, a pair of states that Republican groups had spent millions of dollars trying to make competitive.
Americans delivered a fi-nal judgment on a long and bitter campaign that drew so many people to the polls that several key states extended voting for hours. In Virginia and Florida, long lines stretched from polling places, with the Obama campaign sending text messages to supporters in those areas, saying: “You can still vote.”
Neither party could predict how the outcome would affect the direction of the Republican Party. Moderates were hopeful it would lead the rank- and- file to realize the party’s grass- roots conservatism that Romney pledged himself to during the primaries doomed him in the general election. Tea party adherents have indicated they will argue he was damaged because of his move to middle ground during the general election.
The results were more a matter of voters giving Obama more time than a second chance. Through most of the year slight majorities of voters had told pollsters that they believed his policies would improve the economy if they could stay in place into the future.
Obama’s campaign team built its coalition the hard way, through intensive efforts to find and motivate supporters who had lost the ardor of four years ago and, Obama’s strategists feared, might not find their way to polls if left to their own devices.
Up against real enthusiasm for Romney — or, just as important, against Obama — among Republicans and many independents, the Democratic strategy of spending vast sums of money on their get- out- the- vote operation seemed vindicated Tuesday.