The Obama Victory

When it came down to the crunch, the race was not nearly as close as the polls and political pundits had indicated. Obama had won handily and Romney, who entered the evening boasting that he had prepared only a victory speech, was forced to issue a terse concession statement just after midnight, with the Florida race still up in the air.
Without taking away anything from Obama, his victory has to be seen due as much to doubts about the bona fides of his opponent Romney, as to his performance over the last four years in the White House. The economic prospects for the US, usually the key barometer of voter choice, remain intractably gloomy as has the high 7.9% unemployment rate. But to Obama’s credit, he kept the US from falling into a depression and his economic proposals were probably easier to swallow than Romney’s pie-in-the-sky promise to cut taxes, raise defence spending – and yet reduce the deficit.
The changing demographics of the US political landscape also played a role in Obama’s second coming. While Obama lost a substantial chunk of the white vote he had captured in 2008, he was able to recoup by taking an amazing 71% of the Latino vote. For the first time, as a portent of future elections when ‘minorities’ will outnumber whites, Hispanics crossed the 10% line to reach 12.5 million of the total votes cast. In contrast, the Republicans, under both George Bush and Ronald Reagan, had taken the Latino vote. Voters of Caribbean origin also went overwhelmingly for Obama.
Obama’s stand on immigration, while not as progressive as most Latinos or first generation Americans would have wanted, was key to their vote. Obama sent a powerful signal when earlier this summer, he granted temporary legal status to undocumented youths. This was in sharp contrast to the nativist, far right, anti-immigrant rhetoric of Romney and the Republicans who insisted in invoking fears of ‘illegals”.
Latinos and people from the Caribbean communities in which almost everyone knows an undocumented individual – will expect Obama to keep his promises on settling the status of the millions of undocumented persons in the US. But this is only one of the issues in which Obama will have to contend with a Congress that will remain controlled by the Republicans. Other issues that will be of interest to the Caribbean, relate to climate change and environmental regulations – including the long-promised “Cap-and Trade” mechanism that would benefit Guyana, which has promised to sequester its forests.
Overall, unless Obama initiates changes that can improve the economic climate dramatically, we can expect the Republican anti-immigrant line to gain traction and make life more difficult for “people of colour”. A portent of what to expect was revealed by Fox anchor Bob O’Reilly who explained the Obama victory: “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority. People want things.” These ‘people’ who want ‘things’, of course, is the code for stereotyping non-white people who just want ‘handouts’.
As far as foreign policy initiatives that will impact on the Caribbean, there will be no new changes in Obama’s second term. In other words we will be subsumed under the US’ traditional Latin American strategy: the ‘war on drugs’ will continue; economic skirmishes with Brazil over US interest rate policy will continue; Hugo Chavez will continue to be persona non grata and the blockade on Cuba will continue. The razor thin margin between the two parties in Florida will reinforce the clout of the conservative Cuban community to keep the anti-Cuba policies in place.
For the Caribbean we can expect that the new administration will continue its policy of lambasting the region as ‘tax havens’. We wish the administration well however, especially in the economic arena. A vibrant US economy will return some sense of balance in an increasingly polarised world.