But what does the result mean? Politically it’s business as usual, albeit mildly more polite, erudite and consensual. Then again it was always going to be. If we’re talking about demographics, look at this, the results of the 2000 election. This was the last hurrah for Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It was a political strategy that sought to undo civil rights movement gains and cement Republican hegemony. Inner cities were left to decay, while suburbs were allowed to flourish. The working class, especially in the northern industrial cities, was subject to socio-economic torture.
Net migration since the 1970s within the United States has been north east to south west (people go where the jobs are, it makes sense - an example, here's a detailed map of 2008 movements based on IRS figures). The Democratic base is on the move while the Republican base is shuffling off the mortal coil. Hence Bill O’Reilly’s anxious observation, that the white establishment is now a minority. Why such anxiety, Bill, do minorities have a hard time of it in the Land of the Free?
We’re not done though. A determined social democratic party that understood its base (leaving aside how many of these things have ever actually existed) would have tailored their tactics to these facts, delivering reforms that strengthen their base, in other words actively overturning the effects Southern Strategy, re-segregation, deindustrialisation and urban decay. The Democrats are not that party and they never will be. From Gary Younge's piece in today's Graun:
The people who delivered him a second term on Tuesday night – the young, black and brown – are those who were least likely to have benefited from his first. His greatest cheer for the night was when he reprised a version of the speech that made him famous when he introduced John Kerry at the Democratic convention in 2004.
"I believe we can keep the promise of our founders," he said. "The idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn't matter whether you're black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you're willing to try."
That is what people voted for. The trouble is that while Obama has the eloquence to articulate those aspirations he has, for the most part, not had the courage to fight for them or the strategic ability to deliver them.
This is what the Republicans rely on.