As a young child growing up in rural Arkansas, I remember older children scaring us with the threat of a “Boogie-Man.” Although we had never seen him or met anyone who had, we were all terrified at the possibility of meeting this mythical creature on a lonely and desolate road. In our minds, he represented all that was bad and terrifying about being a kid. With time however, the tales of the Boogie-man grew stale. His lore became impractical as we outgrew his legend.
I could not help but reflect on that memory as I watched Republican pundits contort themselves as they tried to explain away the Obama routing of Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race. There they sat on television before a national audience, stupefied, embarrassed and stunned at a loss that they could not have imagined in their wildest dreams. These political charlatans had been revealed for the inept strategists that they obviously are and had been ousted by a public too tired of being ripped off to be scared of re-electing a black man as president.
What was sold to America as a tight race that would have us up all night awaiting results turned out to be a political butt-whipping. Bolstered by the largest turnout of minority voters in this nation’s history, Barack Obama ran up presidential totals that will long prove to be a lesson in political mastery and campaign sophistication.
But how could it happen? I can imagine these pontificators of doom saying to themselves. Of course, in their minds, the election of Obama the first time was certainly a fluke. These so-called political experts had convinced themselves that Barack Obama was merely a charismatic black man on the right side of history. They were certain that white America would not allow this accident of fate to happen again.
And so they tried their best to scare the white masses about the impending black disaster destined to destroy the America they loved. They rolled out the horrible “he’s un-American” monster, accompanied by the hideous “Obama is a Socialist ” creation. When those iterations weren’t vile enough, they fed us the old stale and reliable diets of thinly veiled racism, sprinkled lightly with white superiority as Romney supporters brandished “Put the White Back in the White House” T-shirts at campaign rallies.
Unfortunately, their political scheme, based largely on old-South code words and white fear, was dwarfed in a cascade of diversity, positive economic trends and good old-fashioned hope. For this group, however, their hope was not nestled in a growing America where multiculturalism flourishes, but in a yearning for a time when no God-fearing white voter would allow a black man to occupy the White House.
The Obama victory was both decisive and impressive. As the Obama wave swept through the Midwest and the designated swing states, up the East Coast and then finally turned to the West Coast and upper mountain regions, the president secured an overwhelming 332 electoral votes.
In unprecedented fashion, Obama earned in excess of 95 percent of the African-American vote. In some precincts that went for the president, Romney failed to get a single vote. Among Latino voters, Obama crushed Romney by winning 71 percent of the vote, allowing him to win in places like Colorado, New Mexico and Florida. The president also claimed 73 percent of the Asian-American vote and an impressive 52 percent of all votes from women. For the first time in the nation’s history, it was clear that minorities had elected the president of the United States.
Neatly tucked away in the pages of the Republican playbook for 2012 was one prevailing theme: “Barack Obama is not like us.” Unfortunately for these dinosaurs, they are right. Obama isn’t like them at all; he’s like us!
Cotton is Senior Major Gifts Officer at The Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston Salem, North Carolina.
