Yesterday I had a look at one of the first articles I wrote about this year’s presidential election, a response to my good friend Tim Stanley, which ended “Bin Laden’s dead, General Motors is alive. That’s about as existential as this election’s going to get”.
So it’s proved. This has been a campaign surprising for its lack of surprises, for the dogs that haven’t barked.
We left the conventions with Barack Obama ahead in the polls and favourite to win, while Team Romney battled perceptions their candidate was a man who was aloof and out of touch, and a campaign schedule that had faced severed disruption because of a hurricane. As it was in the beginning, so it is at the end.
As I’ve beenpointingoutwithmonotonousregularityoverthecourseofthepasttwomonths, elections are decided by the fundamentals. And the reason why Barack Obama is going to be re-elected president of the United States tomorrow is because none of the big structural political shifts predicted by Mitt Romney and his supporters have materialised.
We were told Romney was going to outspend the president by a margin of 2:1. That would in turn enable him to unleash a ferocious barrage of negative advertising, and destroy Obama in the eyes of the swing-state electors who would determine the contest’s outcome.
It didn’t happen. Obama matched Romney dollar for dollar, and launched his own ad blitz in the spring that burned an image of Romney as affluent, arrogant and callous into the public consciousness.
We were told the enthusiasm and organisation that had swept Obama to power in 2008 would evaporate, replaced by a wave of excitement for his challenger. Again, it simply hasn’t occurred. The early voting returns have shown an energised and well-marshalled Democratic base, and already given Obama such significant leads in the key swing states that Romney is facing margins too wide to bridge.
Time and again we were informed that the ailing economy would to be the issue that would deliver Republicans the keys to the White House. But throughout the autumn the key economic indicators – most notably jobs – have remained on a stubbornly positive trajectory, with broad economic confidence rising in their wake. This in turn has seen a rise in the presidential approval ratings.
The campaign itself had a whole host of supposedly game-changing moments. But none of them had a lasting impact. Benghazi was supposed to be the new Watergate; it wasn’t. The final set of unemployment figures were supposed to trip Obama as he ducked for the finishing line; they didn’t.
And of course there was the Denver debate. A reset button had been pressed; the “real Mitt Romney” had finally arrived on the scene. Except he hadn’t. Or if he had, people took a look, thought “OK, maybe he hasn’t got horns and a tail. But that doesn’t mean I want him to be my president,” and the status quo was restored.
For two or three weeks the narrative surrounding the contest was turned on its head. But the fundamentals – sorry, we’re back to those annoying fundamentals again – remained unchanged. And as the robustness of Barack Obama’s swing state ‘firewall’ became apparent, the narrative finally began to realign itself with reality.
To the extent we did have surprises, they worked almost exclusively to Obama’s advantage. The "47 per cent" tape, which cemented the negative perception of Romney created in Obama’s spring advertising offensive. The Ohio own-goal, where Romney’s ads claiming Jeep production was to be transferred to China created a furious reaction from the motor manufacturers, and reinforced the impression amongst Midwestern blue-collar voters that Barack Obama was the friend of the motor industry, while Mitt Romney was its mortal enemy. The Richard Mourdock rape comments, after which Romney inexplicably refused to cut Mourdock loose, pulling the rug from his efforts to reach out to women voters.
And of course, the one genuine October surprise, hurricane Sandy. While Mitt Romney scurried around holding “relief events” with Nascar drivers and country and western signers, Barack Obama toured the devastation with the Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, looking presidential and in command.
But even these events merely served to confirm preconceptions, rather than alter them. Barack Obama finishes the 2012 race ahead for the same reasons he started it ahead: because he is presiding over a slow but sustained economic recovery; because he is bringing America’s sons and daughters home from two wars, and has delivered America’s most reviled enemy to ultimate justice; because he is an effective and innovative political campaigner; and because whatever weaknesses he has, and whatever mistakes he has made during the first term of his presidency, Mitt Romney has proved he is simply not a strong enough candidate to exploit them.
Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. That’s why Barack Obama is returning to the White House.
