President Barack Obama’s victory was secured by a politics of yes. Telling voters yes is essential to victory since most voters do not like to be told no. The key to political victory is figuring out how to tell the most people yes and the fewest people no. The president secured a second term by successfully employing this strategy.
There are two groups of voters that gave him a second term: women and Latino voters. Women voters do not want to be told no when it comes to their bodies. What put women voters in the president’s camp was such social issues as abortion. As long as abortion is put in terms of women’s health and rights, Republicans will not be able to capture a large enough portion of independent women voters in swing states to win the White House. The Republicans have three options: (1) adopt a pro-choice stance, (2) let the issue fade into the background so that it no longer plays a pivotal role, (3) reframe the debate over abortion from a woman’s health issue to a fetal health issue.
The first option will not, and perhaps should not, happen. Option number three will be a difficult maneuver and may prove too nuanced to change anyone’s mind. This leaves option number two as the only good option for capturing the votes of women who voted for President Obama because of the Republican stance on abortion. At a minimum, though, Republicans need to do a better job of keeping people like Richard Mourdock of Indiana and Todd Akin of Missouri from making inane comments on the topic.
Latino voters, either in fact or in rhetoric, were told yes by Democrats and no by Republicans. Whether it was Arizona’s controversial immigration law SB 1070 or Mitt Romney’s policy of self-deportation, Latino voters saw the Republican Party telling them, “We don’t want you here.” Rick Perry was crushed by the Right during the primary season for his decision as Texas governor to support a bill that would offer in-state tuition to some undocumented students. In other words, when a Republican tried to say yes to the Latino community, the base of the Republican Party turned against him.
Latino voters understood the Republican Party to be telling them no, which is why they went with the president by a 75-23 margin nationally. In an up for grabs Colorado they went his way by a margin of 87 to 10; in Ohio by 82 to 17. Just as with women voters, the GOP needs to find a way to appeal to Latino voters by either changing its stance on controversial issues, emphasizing new issues that may appeal to Latino voters, or reframing the existing debate. The most effective and consistent strategy would be for Republicans to find issues about which their ideas align with the Latino-voting population and push those to the center of the debate.
The evidence is clear; voters want to be told yes. Colorado voters want to be told that, yes, they may smoke what they want, while Maine and Maryland voters want to be told that, yes, they may marry whomever they choose. Victory in 2012 went to the party that told more people yes and fewer people no. The point is not which party has policies that are better for the country, but it is about which party makes voters feel as if they were being told yes.
For those who care about the quality of the proposals this is problematic in that there is no assessment of what is good but only what is politically expedient. Some ideas that are good are not expedient. This is an inherent problem with popular government. James Madison, the author of The Federalist No. 10, knew this to be true, which is why he argued for a republican form of government rather than a democracy: only within a republic where power is divided horizontally and vertically can the capricious nature of the electorate be tempered. Perhaps the safeguards have eroded over time or they were insufficient to begin with, but it appears that Madison's “factions” have found a welcome home within the American political process.
Nobody wants to hear that it is in the nation's best interest, or in the best interest of liberty, to let an industry go bankrupt, to let housing prices fall, or to tell retired people that their financial stability is not the government's responsibility. What most voters want to hear, according to what happened on November 6, is that when we need help we should ask the government and the government should always pronounce a resounding yes!
