A multihued future

So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.

On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won't. You can't. It's our country, too.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can only be seen as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn't even close. In a year when it was hard to imagine how Democrats could avoid losing seats in the Senate, they won seats and increased their majority.

Republicans did keep control of the House, but to call this a "status quo" election is absurd. After the 2010 midterm election, Republicans had the initiative and Democrats were reeling. After Tuesday, the dynamics are utterly reversed.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the conservative bloviators who were so convinced that Mitt Romney would defeat Obama, perhaps in a landslide, and proceed to undo everything the president has accomplished.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh was almost wistful: "I went to bed last night thinking we're outnumbered. … I went to bed last night thinking we've lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this." He then launched into a riff about Obama and Santa Claus that is too incoherent to quote. Apparently, we are all elves.

Sean Hannity, on his radio show, was angry: "Americans, you get the government you deserve. And it pains me to say this, but America now deserves Barack Obama. You deserve what you voted for. … We are a self-governing country, and the voice and the will of 'we the people' have now been heard. America wanted Barack Obama four more years. Now you've got him. Good luck with that."

As is often the case, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was a bit more perceptive: "The White establishment is now the minority," he said Tuesday evening, before it was clear that Obama would win. "The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore."

No, Bill, it's not.

African-Americans made up a record 13 percent of the electorate in 2008. Many analysts attributed this spike in turnout to the novelty of being able to vote for a Black major-party presidential candidate. This year, some pollsters factored into their projections the assumption that the Black vote would decline to a more "normal" 11 percent.

But on Tuesday, African-Americans once again were 13 percent of all voters -- and probably played an even bigger role than this number would indicate in re-electing Obama.

Look at Ohio, arguably the most hotly contested swing state. African-Americans make up only 12 percent of the state population, but according to exit polls, they constituted a full 15 percent of the Ohio electorate on Tuesday. Blacks, in other words, were more motivated to vote than Whites.

Ohio also happens to be a state where Republican officials sharply curtailed early voting. If, as many suspect, this was a transparent attempt to depress minority turnout by making it harder for working-class Ohioans to vote, it didn't work. In fact, it backfired.

Look at Colorado. In 2008, Latinos were 13 percent of the electorate; just over 60 percent voted for Obama. On Tuesday, Latinos made up 14 percent of Colorado voters -- and, according to exit polls, three-fourths of them supported the president. Think this might have something to do with Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" immigration policy? I do.

Nationwide, roughly three of every 10 voters Tuesday were minorities. African-Americans chose Obama by 93 percent, Latinos by 71 percent, and Asian-Americans, the nation's fastest-growing minority, by 73 percent.

These are astounding margins, and I think they have less to do with specific policies than with broader issues of identity and privilege. I think that when Black Americans saw Republicans treat President Obama with open disrespect and try their best to undermine his legitimacy, they were offended. When Latinos heard Republicans insist there should be no compassion for undocumented immigrants, I believe they were angered. When Asian-Americans heard Republicans speak of China in almost "Yellow Peril" terms, I imagine they were insulted.

On Tuesday, the America of today asserted itself.

This time, it was about us -- who we are as a nation -- and a multihued, multicultural future.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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A multihued future

So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.

On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won't. You can't. It's our country, too.

President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can only be seen as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn't even close. In a year when it was hard to imagine how Democrats could avoid losing seats in the Senate, they won seats and increased their majority.

Republicans did keep control of the House, but to call this a "status quo" election is absurd. After the 2010 midterm election, Republicans had the initiative and Democrats were reeling. After Tuesday, the dynamics are utterly reversed.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to the conservative bloviators who were so convinced that Mitt Romney would defeat Obama, perhaps in a landslide, and proceed to undo everything the president has accomplished.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh was almost wistful: "I went to bed last night thinking we're outnumbered. … I went to bed last night thinking we've lost the country. I don't know how else you look at this." He then launched into a riff about Obama and Santa Claus that is too incoherent to quote. Apparently, we are all elves.

Sean Hannity, on his radio show, was angry: "Americans, you get the government you deserve. And it pains me to say this, but America now deserves Barack Obama. You deserve what you voted for. … We are a self-governing country, and the voice and the will of 'we the people' have now been heard. America wanted Barack Obama four more years. Now you've got him. Good luck with that."

As is often the case, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly was a bit more perceptive: "The White establishment is now the minority," he said Tuesday evening, before it was clear that Obama would win. "The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America anymore."

No, Bill, it's not.

African-Americans made up a record 13 percent of the electorate in 2008. Many analysts attributed this spike in turnout to the novelty of being able to vote for a Black major-party presidential candidate. This year, some pollsters factored into their projections the assumption that the Black vote would decline to a more "normal" 11 percent.

But on Tuesday, African-Americans once again were 13 percent of all voters -- and probably played an even bigger role than this number would indicate in re-electing Obama.

Look at Ohio, arguably the most hotly contested swing state. African-Americans make up only 12 percent of the state population, but according to exit polls, they constituted a full 15 percent of the Ohio electorate on Tuesday. Blacks, in other words, were more motivated to vote than Whites.

Ohio also happens to be a state where Republican officials sharply curtailed early voting. If, as many suspect, this was a transparent attempt to depress minority turnout by making it harder for working-class Ohioans to vote, it didn't work. In fact, it backfired.

Look at Colorado. In 2008, Latinos were 13 percent of the electorate; just over 60 percent voted for Obama. On Tuesday, Latinos made up 14 percent of Colorado voters -- and, according to exit polls, three-fourths of them supported the president. Think this might have something to do with Mitt Romney's "self-deportation" immigration policy? I do.

Nationwide, roughly three of every 10 voters Tuesday were minorities. African-Americans chose Obama by 93 percent, Latinos by 71 percent, and Asian-Americans, the nation's fastest-growing minority, by 73 percent.

These are astounding margins, and I think they have less to do with specific policies than with broader issues of identity and privilege. I think that when Black Americans saw Republicans treat President Obama with open disrespect and try their best to undermine his legitimacy, they were offended. When Latinos heard Republicans insist there should be no compassion for undocumented immigrants, I believe they were angered. When Asian-Americans heard Republicans speak of China in almost "Yellow Peril" terms, I imagine they were insulted.

On Tuesday, the America of today asserted itself.

This time, it was about us -- who we are as a nation -- and a multihued, multicultural future.

Copyright 2012 The Arizona Republic|azcentral.com. All rights reserved.For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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Ad watch: Restore Our Future ad revives mommy-wars flap

Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, tries to revive the mommy wars in an ad timed to Mother's Day on Sunday. The ad reprises the controversy over a remark about Romney's wife, Ann, made last month by Democratic political strategist Hilary Rosen.

Script

Male narrator:Ann Romney raised five boys. She successfully battled breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. But what does White House insider Hilary Rosen say about Ann Romney?

Hilary Rosen (audio clip): Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.

Narrator: And Bill Maher, who gave a million dollars supporting Obama, attacks …

Bill Maher (video clip): Ann Romney has never gotten her ass out of the house.

Announcer: Happy Mother's Day from Barack Obama's team. Restore Our Future is responsible for the content of this message.

Visuals

Photos of Ann Romney, Hilary Rosen, and a Mother's Day birthday card with photos of President Obama, Rosen and Maher.

Accuracy

The facts are straightforward: Ann Romney did raise five sons and suffer breast cancer and multiple sclerosis. Bill Maher and Hilary Rosen did make those comments — although Maher's full quote was that Romney "has never gotten her ass out of the house to work." He then said, "No one is denying that being a mother is a tough job," but he made a distinction between working at raising children and working for an employer.

Rosen, who made her comment on CNN, where she is a paid contributor, was villified by Republicans who said her comments reflected Democrats' disdain for women who stay home to raise children. She repeatedly went back on television to apologize to Ann Romney.

The claim that is harder to prove is whether Rosen and Maher are an integral part of Obama's "team'' and whether their comments are representative of the president's views. Rosen's remarks were renounced at the time by Obama, his wife, Michelle, and the leaders of his campaign. Rosen works for political consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker, which has worked for the Obama campaign in the past, and she has visited the White House — although the White House would not clarify how many times. But she does not work for the Obama campaign or the Democratic Party. Maher, a comic and talk-show host, gave $1 million in February to Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama super PAC.

The ad is aimed at women, among whom Obama holds a lead vs. Romney in opinion surveys. The president's support is skewed to unmarried women, who support him 68% to 24%, according to the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. Married women — perhaps more likely to be stay-at-home moms — favored Romney 47% to 43%.

Contributing: By Martha T. Moore, USA TODAY

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.

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With Frank leaving, Mass. Dems ponder bleak future (AP)

BOSTON – Rep. Barney Frank's decision to step down at the end of his term is the latest jolt to the bruised ego of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, which once counted Kennedys, House speakers and a president among its ranks.

Instead, some of the state's best-known political figures are now Republicans, among them Sen. Scott Brown and presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

"For a long time, Massachusetts Democrats have felt they played a special role in the national Democratic Party," said Tufts University political science professor Jeffrey Berry. "I think that has gone at this point. There is no one in Congress from Massachusetts who has that stature now."

Frank has long been a liberal lightning rod and is the highest-profile member of the state's all-Democratic House delegation. His announcement follows the decision of another Massachusetts representative, John Olver, a member of the House Appropriations panel, not to seek re-election.

Add to those impending departures the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy in 2009 and the state's loss of a House seat in the most recent redistricting process, and some Democrats in Massachusetts are wondering whether the glory days are behind them.

While the state's senior senator, John Kerry, has a powerful perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and often serves as a troubleshooter across the globe for the Obama administration, there's been plenty of speculation that if Obama wins re-election, Kerry could be tapped to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That would rob Massachusetts of a strong Senate presence.

Part of the decline is due to inexorable demographic changes that are working against the relatively small Northeastern state.

While Southern and Southwestern states have experienced population booms, Massachusetts has seen anemic growth, leading to the loss of one of its 10 seats in Congress.

The prospect of running in a newly redrawn district with 325,000 new constituents, combined with the Democrats' loss of control of the House, prompted Frank's decision not to run again after more than three decades in Congress, the 71-year-old said.

"One of the advantages to me of not running for office is that I don't even have to pretend to be nice to people I don't like," the famously acerbic Frank said.

There was a time not so long ago when Massachusetts Democrats held outsized political sway in Washington.

That power may have reached a high water mark during the country's post-World War II years. Massachusetts politicians held the powerful post of House speaker for nearly 20 years, first under John McCormack from 1962 to 1971 and then again under Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, who wielded the gavel from 1977 to 1987.

During that same span, another Massachusetts Democrat — John F. Kennedy — was elected president, and his brother Edward began what would be a nearly half-century of service in the Senate.

Even as the nation's population growth shifted away from the Northeast, Massachusetts Democrats still harbored big political dreams. Both Kerry and former Gov. Michael Dukakis won the Democratic nomination for president but lost in the general election.

One reason Massachusetts Democrats gained power in Washington is that they were able to easily win election again and again at home, giving them prized seniority on congressional committees, according to Berry.

Before Republicans won control of the House, Frank was chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and was key in crafting the Dodd-Frank bill, which contained the stiffest restrictions on banks and Wall Street since the Great Depression.

"That's the real loss, because committee chairs have enormous power to push projects and send money into various accounts that will help their home districts," Berry said.

Not everyone is ready to consign the state party's best days to the history books.

Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh concedes the departure of Frank and Olver and the death of Kennedy are blows — but are also part of the inevitable progression of politics.

He said the strength of the Massachusetts Democratic Party is the depth of its political farm league.

"We keep electing good strong, capable Democrats. We constantly have a stream of our leaders who are moving up the line," Walsh said. "I think Massachusetts has a place at the table not because of geography and not because of size, but because of the talent we have."

Walsh also pointed out the close political and personal relationship between Gov. Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama.

The immediate future of Massachusetts' reputation for political king-making may be in the hands of a Republican. While Romney is running for the GOP presidential nomination, he's been forced to play down his signature political accomplishment as Massachusetts governor — passage of a landmark 2006 health care law.

Brown surprised many in the state by capturing the seat formerly held by Edward Kennedy in a special election last year after Kennedy's death from brain cancer. Democrats are pinning some of their hopes for the future on Harvard professor and consumer activist Elizabeth Warren, who has fired up the party's liberal base as she works to unseat Brown in next year's election.

Despite Frank's departure, the state still boasts some powerful Democrats with seniority and political muscle.

The dean of the delegation, Rep. Edward Markey of Malden, who was elected in 1976, is the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee and has been a leading party voice on climate change, nuclear safety, consumer issues and environmental matters.

Rep. Michael Capuano is a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and has emerged as a strong inside player on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Richard Neal of Springfield, a senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, is seen as a potential chairman of that powerful tax-writing panel. Rep. Jim McGovern of Worcester, meanwhile, is seen as a possible chairman of the House Rules Committee down the road.

_____

Associated Press writers Andrew Miga in Washington and Bob Salsberg in Boston contributed to this report.

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Justice Ginsburg's future plans closely watched (AP)

WASHINGTON – Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court's future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.

The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg's successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.

But Ginsburg could retire now and allow Obama to name a like-minded successor whose confirmation would be in the hands of a Democratic-controlled Senate. "She has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. "On the other hand, there's the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?"

For now, Ginsburg's answer is, you don't.

There are few more indelicate questions to put to a Supreme Court justice, but Ginsburg has said gracefully, and with apparent good humor, that the president should not expect a retirement letter before 2015.

She will turn 82 that year, the same age Justice Louis Brandeis was when he left the court in 1939. Ginsburg, who is Jewish, has said she wants to emulate the court's first Jewish justice.

While declining an interview on the topic, Ginsburg pointed in a note to The Associated Press to another marker she has laid down, that she is awaiting the end of a traveling art exhibition that includes a painting that usually hangs in her office by the German emigre Josef Albers.

"Couldn't think of leaving until after it is returned to me, which won't be anytime soon," she wrote.

Certainly there is no indication that Ginsburg is slowing down on the job, even after she underwent surgery two years ago for pancreatic cancer that her doctors said was detected at a very early stage.

Appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she served for the first time this term with two other women, Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, and as the senior liberal-leaning justice, a role that gives her the power to assign dissenting opinions when she is on the losing side of ideologically split rulings.

On a personal level, she appeared to take comfort in her work as she adjusted to life without her husband, Martin, who died a year ago.

And she doesn't have to look very far ahead to imagine having a vote in some of the most important cases of her time on the court, including the challenge to Obama's health care overhaul and the fight over gay marriage.

Laura Krugman Ray, a Widener University law professor who has written about Ginsburg, said it is easy to believe Ginsburg would want to have a voice in those cases.

"I think the court is enormously important for her," Ray said. "And especially now after husband's death, you wonder what she can see herself doing if she were not on the court."

Ginsburg, the second woman on the bench, has only to look at the first for a cautionary tale about retiring. Sandra Day O'Connor announced her retirement in 2005 in part so she could take care of her ailing husband, John. Two months later, Chief Justice William Rehnquist died in office.

Meanwhile, John O'Connor's health declined much faster than his wife anticipated and he soon was living in a nursing home in Arizona. Would she have quit the court had she known what awaited?

In retirement, O'Connor has maintained a busy schedule, hearing cases on federal appeals courts as well as advocating for Alzheimer's funding, improved civics education and merit selection, rather than partisan election, of state judges.

O'Connor, now 81, also has said she that she regrets that some of her decisions have been "dismantled" by the Supreme Court. Justice Samuel Alito, who took her seat in 2006, has voted differently from O'Connor in key cases involving abortion rights, campaign finance and the use of race in governmental policies.

But some on the left say that the focus on the personal is misplaced. Ginsburg needs to put self-interest aside and act for the good of the issues they believe in, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy wrote recently. Kennedy said 72-year-old Justice Stephen Breyer should leave, too.

Too much is at stake and both life and politics are too fickle to take the risk that everything will work out as the justices desire, Kennedy said.

David Garrow, a Cambridge University historian who follows the court, said Ginsburg's situation points to an institutional problem for the court, "the arguably narcissistic attitude that longer is better."

The longest-serving justice, William Douglas, was on the court for more than 36 1/2 years, reluctant to retire even after a debilitating stroke. "History teaches us that often longer is not better," Garrow said.

Justices sometimes look at electoral projections when considering retirement, he said, adding that Ginsburg probably still could decide to retire next summer if Obama's electoral prospects seem shaky.

Chief Justice Earl Warren never envisioned retiring during the presidency of his nemesis, Richard Nixon. Yet that is exactly what came to pass in 1969.

Warren planned to step down early in what he hoped would be Lyndon Johnson's second full term. But then the Vietnam War got in the way of Johnson's re-election plans and Robert Kennedy fell to an assassin's bullet.

At that point, Warren thought Nixon had a reasonable chance of winning the presidency "and desperately tried to leave under a lame-duck LBJ presidency on its last legs," said Artemus Ward, a political science professor at Northern Illinois University who has written about court retirements.

Johnson's nomination of Abe Fortas as chief justice failed amid election-year politics in the Senate and the first allegations of financial improprieties that eventually would drive Fortas from the bench. Early in 1969, Nixon nominated Warren Burger as chief justice.

___

Follow Sherman on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/shermancourt

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