“This election was more than just a contest between two presidential candidates,” U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay told us about President Obama’s historic reelection on Tuesday night. “It was a choice between two very different visions of what kind of country we want America to be. It was a choice between lifting up middle-class families, or letting the privileged few play by a different set of rules. It was a choice between equal opportunity and real inclusion …. and the politics of fear, division and intolerance.”
On Tuesday, America chose support for the middle class, equal opportunity and real inclusion. We rejected the celebration of privilege and the politics of fear, division and intolerance. “We do not fear change,” Clay told us, “we embrace it.”
Part of the change we see is a younger and more racially diverse America where women voters will cross party lines to vote on women’s issues. This was the message of Obama winning nearly every battleground state and a number of female Democrats – most spectacularly, our own valued U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill – beating male Republicans with outmoded and offensive stances on women issues. We do, indeed, embrace these changes.
President Obama now finds himself in a position to lead – albeit against relentless Republican opposition – thinking only of his legacy, not his reelection potential. “Now we can move forward and finish a lot of the work he started,” said Lewis Reed, president of the Board of Aldermen and a very early Obama supporter.
Interestingly, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon – a very different sort of Democrat – finds himself in a very similar position, term-limited and at least theoretically in a position to lead. We are persuaded that Nixon will govern for the next four years with his eyes on the prize of a national office, but we challenge him to use his immense political capital to show some progressive leadership that could well burnish his image as a Democrat on a national stage.
If voters tipped their hands about a preference for Nixon’s successor on Tuesday night, their choice was clear. Jason Kander, the new Secretary of State, is just getting started, having just won his first statewide office, and Susan Montee is effectively finished as a candidate, having lost her second successive statewide race (and this time, to the badly damaged Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder). That leaves Attorney General Chris Koster and state Treasurer Clint Zweifel, and Koster tallied more than 150,000 more votes than Zweifel on Tuesday. Koster is the early favorite for the Democratic nomination for Governor in a race that starts now, and he will be watched closely.
In the city, we also see new hope and new scope for leadership. President Mayor Francis G. Slay has led a successful campaign for a version of local control of the city police; thanks to statewide voters, as of next July the St. Louis mayor will run the city police department, like almost all other mayors, and be held accountable for addressing our crime problem and how it’s policed. And city voters have decided by a wide margin that St. Louis should have 14 wards and aldermen, not 28 (unfortunately not effective until after the 2020 Census). “This will bring people into City Hall overall with a broader perspective,” Mayor Slay told us, “and help us as a city with respect to a more strategic approach to resource distribution.” A leaner city council also will make for a more effective city government that can better seize our unrealized potential for much-needed economic growth that will create new jobs.
Indeed, we do not fear change in 2012 – we know it is necessary, and we embrace it.
