Election Post-Mortems -- Not Romney's Fault

In addition to many people I run into (e.g., at the gym) who freely share that they are still in mourning, there’s been much hand-wringing and blame in the post-mortem analyses of the election.  Too much of it has been directed at Mitt Romney – a great candidate who gave it his all.  Ann Coulter explains how and why that blame is mis-directed.  She is reinforced in articles by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Kimberly Strassel and Joel Rosenberg, all of whom (along with myself) point out factors like minority vs. religious values turnout, growth of entitlement mentality, a long & vicious primary, an incumbent, etc. Here’s a table of contents for this somewhat long post:

1. “Romney was not the Problem,” by Ann Coulter (interesting contrast w. Reagan, etc.)

2.  “More than 6 Million Self-Described Evangelicals Voted for Obama,” by Joel Rosenberg (exit polling analysis of religious turnout and voting) & my analysis of the low Evangelical vote

3. “The GOP Turnout Myth,” by Kimberly Strassel (Romney did as well or better than McCain – just not as well as Obama among minorities)

4.  “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire,” by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky (rise of the liberal/entitlement mentality & a Jewish perspective)

Romney Hits The Happiest Place On Earth

Two weeks after former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney lost the presidential election to Barack Obama, the politician headed to the Happiest Place On Earth with his family.  [Some well-deserved family time]

ROMNEY WAS NOT THE PROBLEM

Ann Coulter, November 21, 2012

Small minds always leap to the answers given the last time around, which is probably why Maxine Waters keeps getting re-elected [she represents my district – to our great shame]. But the last time is not necessarily the same as this time. A terrorist attack is not the same as the Cold War, a war in Afghanistan is not the same as a war in Iraq, and Mitt Romney is not the same as John McCain or Bob Dole. 

But since the election, many conservatives seem to be coalescing around the explanation for our defeat given by Jenny Beth Martin of the Tea Party Patriots, who said: "What we got was a weak, moderate candidate handpicked by the Beltway elites and country club establishment wing of the Republican Party. The presidential loss is unequivocally on them." 

There was also the seven months of primaries, during which Romney got more votes than the rest of the field combined. So there's that. Moreover, the idea that Mitt Romney was "a weak, moderate candidate" is preposterous. 

As Trotsky said, in moments of crisis, people with no politics tend to develop the worst possible politics. 

Even newly elected Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas complained that Romney failed to get across that there are "two viewpoints and directions for the country" and that he erred by trying to "be a nice guy." As Cruz said, "I'm pretty certain Mitt Romney actually French-kissed Barack Obama" in the third debate -- proving once again that comedy is harder than it looks. 

The idea that Romney failed to present a clear contrast with Obama or was too "nice" is also nonsense. If Republicans continue to tell themselves comforting myths about our candidate being the problem, they better get used to losing a lot more elections. 

The only Republican to defeat a sitting president in the last century was Ronald Reagan in 1980, when he beat Jimmy Carter, the second-worst president in U.S. history (pending the final results of Obama's second term). Because of that, and also because he is in the top two best American presidents, Reagan's example is worth studying.

In Reagan's one debate with Carter in 1980, he presented "two viewpoints and directions for the country" by vowing to save Medicare and not to cut taxes too much. Loud and clear, Reagan said: "My tax cut does not come close to eliminating (Carter's) $86 billion increase. I'm only reducing the amount of the increase." 

There's your bold contrasting vision! 

Reagan picked a pro-choice, anti-supply side Republican as his running mate. He lavishly praised FDR in his acceptance speech at the national convention, leading The New York Times to title an editorial about him "Franklin Delano Reagan." 

Meanwhile, Romney promised to institute major reforms to Medicare, repeal Obamacare and impose a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. He said he'd issue a 50-state waiver to Obamacare on his first day in office. (Why he didn't promise it to all 57 states I'll never know.) He chose a pro-life, fiscal conservative as his running mate and never praised FDR. 

A careful analysis of the Romney plan thus reveals several deviations from the Democrat platform -- more stark than those delineated by even Reagan. 

Romney was the most libertarian candidate Republicans have run since Calvin Coolidge. And he got more votes from the dwindling white majority than Reagan did. 

How many more votes would Romney have gotten by being a rude, condescending jerk? Sure, it worked for Obama, but he was the incumbent. 

Some conservatives didn't trust Romney because, as governor of a state between blue and North Korea, he had instituted a health insurance mandate, one feature of the hated Obamacare. 

As governor of a purple state, Reagan had signed the most liberal abortion law in the country and imposed the three largest state tax hikes in the nation's history. Nevada Sen. Paul Laxalt's nominating speech hailed Reagan's governorship of California for producing "a veritable Great Society of aid for schools, minorities and the handicapped," as the Times put it. Reagan had also been an actual member of the godless, treason party. 

This is not to diminish Reagan. It is to say that Romney wasn't the problem. 

To the extent Republicans have a problem with their candidates, it's not that they're not conservative enough. Where are today's Nelson Rockefellers, Arlen Specters or George H.W. Bushes? Happily, they have gone the way of leprosy. 

Having vanquished liberal Republicans, the party's problem now runs more along the lines of moron showoffs, trying to impress tea partiers like Jenny Beth Martin by taking insane positions on rape exceptions for abortion -- as 2 million babies are killed every year from pregnancies having nothing to do with rape. 

Romney lost because he was running against an incumbent, was beaten up during a long and vicious primary fight, and ran in a year with a very different electorate from 1980. At least one of those won't be true next time. But we're not going to win any elections by telling ourselves fairy tales about a candidate who lost because he wasn't conservative enough, articulate enough or mean enough. 

COPYRIGHT 2012 ANN COULTER

The Evangelical Factor

In my last post I passed on what I heard was 16 million more evangelicals who didn’t vote this election than last (I assume that referred to registered or eligible voters).  At first blush, that might seem to be inconsistent with the apparent 2.5 million fewer Evangelicals who did vote in 2012 than 2008 (see below).  But those figures are apples & oranges.  Even if the same number voted, you can have an increase in the number who didn’t vote if the total number of Evangelical registered/eligible voters grew.  Some or much of that 16 million (if correct) could be due to growth in the number of evangelicals over the last 4 years, and/or a big Evangelical voter registration drive (highly likely during the primaries & strong Evangelical support of Santorum et al).  If that’s the case, then the percent of Evangelicals voting DID drop significantly this election – easily significantly enough to have made the difference in the outcome.  If I find the time to research the 4 year growth & total number of Evangelicals, or if someone shares that, it’s easy enough to do the math.

But even if there was zero Evangelical growth (highly doubtful there was negative growth with above-average reproductive rates and likely proselytizing), analysis below shows that the absolute drop in Evangelical turnout was enough to lose the election for Romney, as those Evangelicals who DID vote broke strongly (78%) for him.  Of course, Evangelicals who either don’t have a problem voting for a Mormon, or at least clearly see the preference over Obama, are highly likely to vote for Romney based on values (moral & fiscal).

The problem was (see the next article) that while Obama’s total vote was several million smaller than in 2008, he was much more successful in turning out more of the minorities (Hispanics, blacks) that strongly broke for him in 2012 – especially in Ohio & Florida.  So the combination of low GOP (especially Evangelical) turnout and high Democrat (esp. minorities) turnout did it. And the irony of course (pointed out in the following link) is that the moral values of Hispanics, blacks & Catholics typically should go for the conservative – they didn’t vote their values, but rather for personality, race, party or entitlements.  And apparently too many Evangelicals also didn’t vote their values (moral, fiscal) – by not voting at all. 

And the only logical explanation for such a poor Evangelical turnout compared with other groups, given the clear consequences, is the theological preoccupation they have with Mormons -- despite shared moral & fiscal values.  I have to believe after the severe vitriol of high-profile evangelicals like Jeffries during the primary, and no doubt many other lower profile ones, and consistent polling over many years that some 30% of evangelicals would never vote for a Mormon, that there wouldn't be some lingering effect not overcome by all of the Romney campaign's & some other evangelicals' efforts.  There was a stark contrast in their heated support for Santorum, and tepid support for Romney.

A friend shared this link to an article comparing turnout and voting preferences among religious groups in 2008 vs. 2012:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2957237/posts

While based on exit polling (presumably a reliable source, though not cited), which has been somewhat more error-prone than telephone polls (typically a few percent due to larger sample sizes & more scientific), presumably even larger errors (say 10-20%) wouldn’t likely account for all of the 16 million cited in my last post (again, Evangelical growth or registration drives could also help account for it).  However, that much error could be a few to several million votes -- enough to have made the difference in a popular vote gap of less than 3 million, and possibly an even more critical difference in the battleground states.  Not sure how different the evangelical makeup would be in those states.  I do note, however, that the author bases his analysis on "white, born-again evangelicals" -- not sure how much things change when accounting for non-white (& non-born-again?) ones -- they might tend like other non-whites to go for Obama, anyway, in both elections.  Unclear they'd be any more disposed to not voting for either. 

However, while the increase in number of Evangelicals who didn’t vote MAY be smaller than 16 million (the number who did vote clearly is smaller than in 2008), the cause & effect of an apparently large number who didn’t vote are likely still valid.  The basic message, I believe, is that although Romney got higher percentages of the Evangelical and Catholic votes than McCain, about 2.5 million fewer of each turned out to vote this time.  The Catholic vote was almost evenly split again, so didn’t make much difference.  But Romney got 78% of the Evangelical vote, so their lower turnout cost him about 2 million votes – just about the number he lost the election by.  And if there were even more Evangelicals this time who could have voted but didn’t, that number of potential votes lost is likely larger than 2 million.

  

If these numbers are valid, that still leaves me scratching my head about the lower turnout despite much-touted record get-out-the-vote efforts.  Although Romney's drop in turnout relative to McCain's is much smaller than Obama's drop.  I'm curious about the other possible explanations I mentioned -- Ron Paul or Tea Party purists.  Or, it could be that many just couldn't decide (it was a fairly evenly split popular vote), or were not excited about either (apparently less about Obama), didn't appreciate how sharp and critical the differences were and the importance of the election, were rebelling over the media saturation, hurricane Sandy, etc.  Or some combination of those.  It just amazes me that in this most critical of elections in our lifetimes, the turnout was so much lower.  We may never fully understand.

But we do know we came frustratingly close to winning – closer than 2008.  And that, together with having learned some lessons & hopefully correcting mistakes, we should be poised to win the next one.  Presumably for one, the Evangelicals won’t have such heartburn about voting their values, without a Mormon candidate.  And perhaps we can convince more minorities to vote theirs.  Further, after 4 more miserable years of Obama & the Democrats, even enough non-value voters will hopefully have had enough.

But we hardly have time to lick our wounds -- as the fiscal cliff rapidly approaches, we're already in battle against the Democrats' proposed preposterous tax increases & lack of spending cuts.  They initially proposed $800 billion tax increase (over 10 yrs?), but just doubled it, and only $400 billion spending cuts.  That's not the right direction.  Bait & switch.  Obama seems to fantasize that he has an election mandate for all that -- au contrare -- he did not run on that, and the people kept the reigns of the purse in the House of Representatives in the hands of the GOP.  They'd better stand their ground.  Some are saying better to go over the fiscal cliff than to accede to the Democrat proposals, although then the GOP would be blamed for middle class tax increases (expiration of the Bush tax cuts).  Others say let them have their way, and when things get bad enough, the GOP will have the mandate.  I say, let's be principled and fight every inch of the way.

"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.” "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy and crushing entitlement debt, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”.
--- Alexis de Tocqueville.

The GOP Turnout Myth 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324352004578133120431803606.html

To win future elections, Republicans will need more than better get-out-the-vote software.

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By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL in the Wall Street Journal, Nov. 23, 2012

To win the next presidential race, the GOP will have to understand what went wrong in 2012. To do that, they've got to come to grips with what did, and did not, happen with turnout.

Even as Republicans have engaged in some agonizing over their candidate and agenda, many have sought comfort in the notion that a big part of the loss came down to simple mechanics. President Obama had a stunning Election Day operation, which turned out his base. Mitt Romney's shop, by contrast, failed to get people to the polls. That explanation is soothing because it suggests that, in the future, all the GOP needs is a slicker piece of get-out-the-vote software.

It's also broadly wrong.

The turnout myth comes from a statistic that has been endlessly repeated: Mitt Romney got fewer votes than John McCain in 2008. This isn't quite true (Mr. Romney this week eked past the McCain totals), and in any event it is somewhat irrelevant. The Romney vote count reflects a nationwide voter turnout that was down nearly five percentage points from 2008. What matters is how the GOP did in the battleground states.

And there? Mr. Romney beat Mr. McCain's numbers in every single battleground, save Ohio. In some cases, his improvement was significant. In Virginia, 65,000 more votes than in 2008. In Florida, 117,000 more votes. In Colorado, 52,000. In Wisconsin, 146,000. Moreover, in key states like Florida, North Carolina, Colorado and Virginia, Mr. Romney turned out even more voters than George W. Bush did in his successful re-election in 2004.

By contrast, Mr. Obama's turnout was down from 2008 in nearly every battleground. He lost 54,000 votes in Virginia, 46,000 votes in Florida, 50,000 votes in Colorado, 63,000 votes in Wisconsin. Ditto Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio. The only state where Mr. Obama increased his votes (by 36,000) was North Carolina, and he was still beaten by a Romney campaign that raised its own turnout by a whopping 147,000.

The temptation here is to conclude that Mr. Romney did better than Mr. McCain, just not well enough, while Mr. Obama did worse, just not badly enough. Yes, there is no question the GOP turnout effort could have been improved. Project ORCA, developed and run by the Romney campaign to refine its turnout efforts, was a dismal failure. And the GOP lagged behind the Obama campaign's sophisticated use of technology, in particular social media.

Could better use of these tools have added enough to the Romney totals to eke out victories in key states? Maybe. In the end, it was 334,000 votes—in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and New Hampshire—that separated Mr. Romney from the presidency. Then again, had Mr. Romney succeeded in grinding out a narrow victory, it might also have masked the party's bigger problems.

Because what ought to scare the GOP is this: Even with higher GOP turnout in key states, even with Mr. Obama shedding voters, Democrats still won. Mr. Obama accomplished this by tapping new minority voters in numbers that beat even Mr. Romney's better turnout.

In Florida, 238,000 more Hispanics voted than in 2008, and Mr. Obama got 60% of Hispanic voters. His total margin of victory in Florida was 78,000 votes, so that demographic alone won it for him. Or consider Ohio, where Mr. Romney won independents by 10 points. The lead mattered little, though, given that black turnout increased by 178,000 votes, and the president won 96% of the black vote. Mr. Obama's margin of victory there was 103,000.

This is the demographic argument that is getting so much attention, and properly so. The Republican Party can hope that a future Democratic candidate won't equal Mr. Obama's magnetism for minority voters. But the GOP would do far better by fighting aggressively for a piece of the minority electorate.

And that, for the record, was the GOP's real 2012 turnout disaster. Elections are about the candidate and the message, yes, but also about the ground game. Republicans right now are fretting about Mr. Romney's failures and the party's immigration platform—that's fair enough. But equally important has been the party's mind-boggling failure to institute a competitive Hispanic ground game. The GOP doesn't campaign in those communities, doesn't register voters there, doesn't knock on doors. So while pre-election polling showed that Hispanics were worried about Obama policies, in the end the only campaign that these voters heard from—by email, at their door, on the phone—was the president's.

Often missed in talk of the GOP's "demographics problem" is that it would take relatively modest minority-voter shifts toward Republicans to return the party to a dominating force. The GOP might see that as the enormous opportunity it is, rather than a problem. The key to winning turnout is having more people to turn out in the first place.

Write to kim@wsj.com

THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
 
Posted on November 7, 2012 
By Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, spiritual leader of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun, Teaneck , New Jersey
 
The most charitable way of explaining the election results of 2012 is that Americans voted for the status quo – for the incumbent President and for a divided Congress. They must enjoy gridlock, partisanship, incompetence, economic stagnation and avoidance of responsibility. And fewer people voted. As I write, with almost all the votes counted, President Obama has won fewer votes than John McCain won in 2008, and more than ten million off his own 2008 total.
 
But as we awake from the nightmare, it is important to eschew the facile explanations for the Romney defeat that will prevail among the chattering classes. Romney did not lose because of the effects of Hurricane Sandy that devastated this area, nor did he lose because he ran a poor campaign, nor did he lose because the Republicans could have chosen better candidates, nor did he lose because Obama benefited from a slight uptick in the economy due to the business cycle.
 
Romney lost because he didn’t get enough votes to win.
 
That might seem obvious, but not for the obvious reasons. Romney lost because the conservative virtues – the traditional American virtues – of liberty, hard work, free enterprise, private initiative and aspirations to moral greatness – no longer inspire or animate a majority of the electorate. The notion of the “Reagan Democrat” is one cliché that should be permanently retired.
 
Ronald Reagan himself could not win an election in today’s America .  [Agrees w. Coulter]
 
The simplest reason why Romney lost was because it is impossible to compete against free stuff. Every businessman knows this; that is why the “loss leader” or the giveaway is such a powerful marketing tool. Obama’s America is one in which free stuff is given away: the adults among the 47,000,000 on food stamps clearly recognized for whom they should vote, and so they did, by the tens of millions; those who – courtesy of Obama – receive two full years of unemployment benefits (which, of course, both disincentivizes looking for work and also motivates people to work off the books while collecting their windfall) surely know for whom to vote; so too those who anticipate “free” health care, who expect the government to pay their mortgages, who look for the government to give them jobs. The lure of free stuff is irresistible.
 
Imagine two restaurants side by side. One sells its customers fine cuisine at a reasonable price, and the other offers a free buffet, all-you-can-eat as long as supplies last. Few – including me – could resist the attraction of the free food. Now imagine that the second restaurant stays in business because the first restaurant is forced to provide it with the food for the free buffet, and we have the current economy, until, at least, the first restaurant decides to go out of business. (Then, the government takes over the provision of free food to its patrons.)
 
The defining moment of the whole campaign was the revelation (by the amoral Obama team) of the secretly-recorded video in which Romney acknowledged the difficulty of winning an election in which “47% of the people” start off against him because they pay no taxes and just receive money – “free stuff” – from the government. Almost half of the population has no skin in the game – they don’t care about high taxes, promoting business, or creating jobs, nor do they care that the money for their free stuff is being borrowed from their children and from the Chinese. They just want the free stuff that comes their way at someone else’s expense. In the end, that 47% leaves very little margin for error for any Republican, and does not bode well for the future.
 
It is impossible to imagine a conservative candidate winning against such overwhelming odds. People do vote their pocketbooks. In essence, the people vote for a Congress who will not raise their taxes, and for a President who will give them free stuff, never mind who has to pay for it.
 
That engenders the second reason why Romney lost: the inescapable conclusion that the electorate is dumb – ignorant, and uninformed. Indeed, it does not pay to be an informed voter, because most other voters – the clear majority – are unintelligent and easily swayed by emotion and raw populism. That is the indelicate way of saying that too many people vote with their hearts and not their heads. That is why Obama did not have to produce a second term agenda, or even defend his first-term record. He needed only to portray Mitt Romney as a rapacious capitalist who throws elderly women over a cliff, when he is not just snatching away their cancer medication, while starving the poor and cutting taxes for the rich. Obama could get away with saying that “Romney wants the rich to play by a different set of rules” – without ever defining what those different rules were; with saying that the “rich should pay their fair share” – without ever defining what a “fair share” is; with saying that Romney wants the poor, elderly and sick to “fend for themselves” – without even acknowledging that all these government programs are going bankrupt, their current insolvency only papered over by deficit spending. Obama could get away with it because he knew he was talking to dunces waving signs and squealing at any sight of him.
 
During his 1956 presidential campaign, a woman called out to Adlai Stevenson: “Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!” Stevenson called back: “That’s not enough, madam, we need a majority!” Truer words were never spoken.

Similarly, Obama (or his surrogates) could hint to blacks that a Romney victory would lead them back into chains and proclaim to women that their abortions and birth control would be taken away. He could appeal to Hispanics that Romney would have them all arrested and shipped to Mexico (even if they came from Cuba or Honduras ), and unabashedly state that he will not enforce the current immigration laws. He could espouse the furtherance of the incestuous relationship between governments and unions – in which politicians ply the unions with public money, in exchange for which the unions provide the politicians with votes, in exchange for which the politicians provide more money and the unions provide more votes, etc., even though the money is gone. He could do and say all these things because he knew his voters were dolts.
 
One might reasonably object that not every Obama supporter could be unintelligent. But they must then rationally explain how the Obama agenda can be paid for, aside from racking up multi-trillion dollar deficits. “Taxing the rich” does not yield even 10% of what is required – so what is the answer, i.e., an intelligent answer?
 
Obama also knows that the electorate has changed – that whites will soon be a minority in America (they’re already a minority in California) and that the new immigrants to the US are primarily from the Third World and do not share the traditional American values that attracted immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a different world, and a different America . Obama is part of that different America , knows it, and knows how to tap into it. That is why he won.
 
Obama also proved again that negative advertising works, invective sells, and harsh personal attacks succeed. That Romney never engaged in such diatribes points to his essential goodness as a person; his “negative ads” were simple facts, never personal abuse – facts about high unemployment, lower take-home pay, a loss of American power and prestige abroad, a lack of leadership, etc. As a politician, though, Romney failed because he did not embrace the devil’s bargain of making unsustainable promises, and by talking as the adult and not the adolescent. Obama has spent the last six years campaigning; even his governance has been focused on payoffs to his favored interest groups. The permanent campaign also won again, to the detriment of American life.
 
It turned out that it was not possible for Romney and Ryan – people of substance, depth and ideas – to compete with the shallow populism and platitudes of their opponents. Obama mastered the politics of envy – of class warfare – never reaching out to Americans as such but to individual groups, and cobbling together a winning majority from these minority groups. Conservative ideas failed to take root and states that seemed winnable, and amenable to traditional American values, have simply disappeared from the map. If an Obama could not be defeated – with his record and his vision of America , in which free stuff seduces voters – it is hard to envision any change in the future. The road to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to a European-socialist economy – those very economies that are collapsing today in Europe – is paved.
 
A second cliché that should be retired is that America is a center-right country. It clearly is not. It is a divided country with peculiar voting patterns, and an appetite for free stuff. Studies will invariably show that Republicans in Congress received more total votes than Democrats in Congress, but that means little. The House of Representatives is not truly representative of the country. That people would vote for a Republican Congressmen or Senator and then Obama for President would tend to reinforce point two above: the empty-headedness of the electorate. Americans revile Congress but love their individual Congressmen. Go figure.
 
The mass media’s complicity in Obama’s re-election cannot be denied. One example suffices. In 2004, CBS News forged a letter in order to imply that President Bush did not fulfill his Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War, all to impugn Bush and impair his re-election prospects. In 2012, President Obama insisted – famously – during the second debate that he had stated all along that the Arab attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi was “terror” (a lie that Romney fumbled and failed to exploit). Yet, CBS News sat on a tape of an interview with Obama in which Obama specifically avoided and rejected the claim of terrorism – on the day after the attack – clinging to the canard about the video. (This snippet of a “60 Minutes” interview was not revealed  - until two days ago!) In effect, CBS News fabricated evidence in order to harm a Republican president, and suppressed evidence in order to help a Democratic president. Simply shameful, as was the media’s disregard of any scandal or story that could have jeopardized the Obama re-election.
 
One of the more irritating aspects of this campaign was its limited focus, odd in light of the billions of dollars spent. Only a few states were contested, a strategy that Romney adopted, and that clearly failed. The Democrat begins any race with a substantial advantage. The liberal states – like the bankrupt California and Illinois – and other states with large concentrations of minority voters as well as an extensive welfare apparatus, like New York , New Jersey and others – give any Democratic candidate an almost insurmountable edge in electoral votes. In New Jersey , for example, it literally does not pay for a conservative to vote. It is not worth the fuel expended driving to the polls. As some economists have pointed out generally, and it resonates here even more, the odds are greater that a voter will be killed in a traffic accident on his way to the polls than that his vote will make a difference in the election. It is an irrational act.

That most states are uncompetitive means that people are not amenable to new ideas, or new thinking, or even having an open mind. If that does not change, and it is hard to see how it can change, then the die is cast. America is not what it was, and will never be again.
 
For Jews, mostly assimilated anyway and staunch Democrats, the results demonstrate again that liberalism is their Torah. Almost 70% voted for a president widely perceived by Israelis and most committed Jews as hostile to Israel . They voted to secure Obama’s future at America ’s expense and at Israel ’s expense – in effect, preferring Obama to Netanyahu by a wide margin. A dangerous time is ahead. Under present circumstances, it is inconceivable that the US will take any aggressive action against Iran and will more likely thwart any Israeli initiative. That Obama’s top aide Valerie Jarrett (i.e., Iranian-born Valerie Jarrett) spent last week in Teheran is not a good sign. The US will preach the importance of negotiations up until the production of the first Iranian nuclear weapon – and then state that the world must learn to live with this new reality. As Obama has committed himself to abolishing America’s nuclear arsenal, it is more likely
 that that unfortunate circumstance will occur than that he will succeed in obstructing Iran’s plans.
 
Obama’s victory could weaken Netanyahu’s re-election prospects, because Israelis live with an unreasonable – and somewhat pathetic – fear of American opinion and realize that Obama despises Netanyahu. A Likud defeat – or a diminution of its margin of victory – is more probable now than yesterday. That would not be the worst thing. Netanyahu, in fact, has never distinguished himself by having a strong political or moral backbone, and would be the first to cave to the American pressure to surrender more territory to the enemy and acquiesce to a second (or third, if you count Jordan ) Palestinian state. A new US Secretary of State named John Kerry, for example (he of the Jewish father) would not augur well. Netanyahu remains the best of markedly poor alternatives. Thus, the likeliest outcome of the upcoming Israeli elections is a center-left government that will force itself to make more concessions and weaken Israel – an Oslo III.
 
But this election should be a wake-up call to Jews. There is no permanent empire, nor is there is an enduring haven for Jews anywhere in the exile. The most powerful empires in history all crumbled – from the Greeks and the Romans to the British and the Soviets. None of the collapses were easily foreseen, and yet they were predictable in retrospect.
 
The American empire began to decline in 2007, and the deterioration has been exacerbated in the last five years. This election only hastens that decline. Society is permeated with sloth, greed, envy and materialistic excess. It has lost its moorings and its moral foundations. The takers outnumber the givers, and that will only increase in years to come. Across the world, America under Bush was feared but not respected. Under Obama , America is neither feared nor respected. Radical Islam has had a banner four years under Obama, and its prospects for future growth look excellent. The “Occupy” riots across this country in the last two years were mere dress rehearsals for what lies ahead – years of unrest sparked by the increasing discontent of the unsuccessful who want to seize the fruits and the bounty of the successful, and do not appreciate the slow pace of redistribution.
 
Two bright sides: Notwithstanding the election results, I arose this morning, went to shul, davened and learned Torah afterwards. That is our reality, and that trumps all other events. Our relationship with G-d matters more than our relationship with any politician, R or D. And, notwithstanding the problems in Israel , it is time for Jews to go home, to Israel . We have about a decade, perhaps 15 years, to leave with dignity and without stress. Thinking that it will always be because it always was has been a repetitive and deadly Jewish mistake. America was always the land from which “positive” aliya came – Jews leaving on their own, and not fleeing a dire situation. But that can also change. The increased aliya in the last few years is partly attributable to young people fleeing the high cost of Jewish living in America . Those costs will only increase in the coming years. We should draw the appropriate conclusions.
 
If this election proves one thing, it is that the Old America is gone. And, sad for the world, it is not coming back