THE 2012 ELECTION RESULTS-66

I was puzzled that every voting group that was broken out and analyzed except Latinos (+700,000), Whites (-7.8 million), Blacks (-1.6 million), ages 18-29 (-1.8 million), and women (-4.0 million) had a lower voter turnout in 2012 than in 2008. Why not Latinos? After thinking about it (taking into account my advanced age, I am likely a bit slow with my thought processes) I then came up with the answer. Between 2008 and 2012 the population of the country increased by circa 6 million and of this figure approximately 3 million were Latinos (they currently comprise 16.5% of the USA population). Therefore the RATE of the Latino turnout was lower as was every other group, but the inordinate increase in population caused an increase in their absolute votes. Republicans need not despair too deeply because elections in this country run in cycles, comsider the 2008 presidential election, won by Democrats; the 2010 midterm election won By Republicans (+63 House of Representatives seats); and of course this election. As an aside, for the only time in the history of this country, of the 16 United States presidents who won reelection, Barack Obama is the first president to win reelection by a narrower margin in his second term than in his first. Hardly an auspicious accomplishment is it? That is what is called a rhetorical question as all of you gentle readers know well. I will now expand on my theme of elections running in cycles. Following the 1920 elections, Republicans gained 62 seats in the House, holding a 302 to 131 majority and had 59 Senate seats to 37 for the Democrats. By 1928 the margins were 267 Republicans seats to 167 for the Democrats in the House and a 56 to 39 edge for Republicans in the Senate. After the Great Depression of 1929 where Republican Herbert Hoover was unfortunate to be president, the public turned on the Republicans with a vengeance in the election of 1932 where the House and Senate changed configuration to Democrats 313/Republicans 117 & Democrats 59/Republicans 36, respectively. In the midterm elections of 1934 Democrats increased their majorities to 332 in the House versus 117 for Republicans & 69 seats in the Senate to 25 for the Republicans. In the presidential election of 1936 the Democrats again increased their majorities to 334 seats in the House to 88 for the Republicans & 76 Senate seats to 16 for the Republicans (Can you imagine – the Republicans held only 16 Senate seats!). Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Alfred Landon by 523 electoral votes to 8 in the presidential election that year. With the Depression taking a turn for the worst after some improvement had occurred in a couple of previous years and the infamous and unpopular "Court Packing" scheme of Roosevelt, the midterm elections of 1938 saw improvement for the Republicans with an increase of +81 seats in the House & +6 in the Senate. Still, the Republicans were so far behind that the alignment was still Democrats 262 seats in the House to 169 for the Republicans and 69 Democrat Senate seats to 23 for the Republicans. Fast forward to the presidential election of 1980. The country was in a blue funk and malaise (high unemployment, even higher inflation, and eroding public confidence) under the inept leadership of Jimmy Carter so the presidential election saw Ronald Reagan sweep to a 489 to 49 electoral victory and Reagan winning 44 states to 6 for Carter. With the economy now humming along at a robust level and confidence building with the American people under the sunny and optimistic direction of Ronald Reagan, "The Great Communicator", the election of 1984 was an overwhelming mandate for the president to the tune of 525 electoral votes and 49 states to 13 electoral votes and one state for the hapless Democrat, Walter Mondale. In 1994 in what was called "The Gingrich Revolution" the Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 40 years, increasing their seats by +54 with 230 seats to 204 for the Democrats. The Republicans also gained control of the Senate 52 to 48 with a 9-seat increase. You may say this is all very well, but the country has now fundamental changed in our ethnic makeup and general approval of a big government welfare state that will permanently favor the Democrats. Nonsense! The country has been changing since its founding. Yes, there have been periods where change has occurred more rapidly than others, for instance during the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century where immigration was even higher than now. Those people in the past assimilated into the mainstream of the American population and became more conservative and traditional as they did so. It was author & longshoreman Eric Hoffer who said the immigrants who build this great country were not the elite and upper class of mostly Europe and also Asia and Latin America, but were the common folk who possessed a hard-work ethic and were "lumpy with talent" and dissatisfied with their lot in their homeland. I do not know why modern immigrants will be fundamentally different from those in the past. Pat Buchanan and his ilk believe the USA will be overrun with illegal immigrants from south of our border putting our country at risk for permanent decline. He is so pessimistic about the future of conservatism in the USA that he seems to think it is fey. That goes against the grain of political history, some of which I detailed above. And there are those who believe that because these new immigrants have higher birth rates, or as demographers say “Total Fertility Rates (TFR)”, they will increase even faster than the settled population. Quoting Bergen Evans on another subject, this is like “The blind mouth of Demos babbling in darkness.” Read my blog essays on the subject or the 2004 book “Fewer” by Ben Wattenberg. This is only a temporary situation, as these immigrants become more prosperous and even before, as they realize a key to more prosperity is smaller families, they will respond accordingly. At one time Catholics in the United States, for what should be obvious reasons, had a higher TFR than Protestants. Now it is about the same. Likewise, currently in Europe some of the countries with the lowest TFR are the Catholic ones of Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The same is happening with Muslims countries around the world, and in fact in the world at large. Time will tell, but I am more optimistic about this issue than some others are. What I am concerned about is an expanding development of a "welfare mentality" among a troubling segment of the population that would enervate the work ethic that has characterized this country for so long and built our prosperity. Are people in this country really that different from people in the past? Perhaps, yet when one thinks how a president could be reelected with the economic conditions so dire in the country today, I hark back to the 1930's. Entirely in the Roosevelt administration during 1934 to 1940 the median annual unemployment rate was 17.2%. The highest unemployment was in 1933 at 24.9% and lowest at 14.3% in 1937. In 1937 there were 11 million unemployed people and 3 million who were underemployed. With a total country population of 130 million in 1937 that would be equivalent to unemployed and underemployed numbers of 26 1/2 million and 7 1/4 million today. You can believe no president today could have been reelected with such dismal numbers when that was his best employment year. Roosevelt was reelected in 1936 (16.9% unemployment) and 1940, all depression years, before the start of WWII, so it seems that the Americans of the 1930's were even more patient and forgiving of their president then than now. We, current Americans, may be different from Americans in the past, although hopefully not as different as some would postulate.