ISAS Working Papers

The 2012 US elections showed clearly how rapidly America was changing. There was demographic change and perceptible changes in beliefs and attitudes. Several minorities – the African-Americans, the Latinos, the Asian-Americans – were on the way to collectively becoming a ‘majority’. There was increasing willingness to accept such tabooed practices as gay marriages and the legalisation of the use of marijuana. Those who wanted public policy to be cognisant of these developments voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama and gave him another term in office. Those who wished America to stand still opted for Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate. After Obama won the 2008 election with the slogan “yes we can” and presented himself as a candidate of change, there was much that was expected of him. But he ran into a solid wall built by the Republicans. In 2012, Romney campaigned for keeping America where it had been for decades. However, as Philip Stevens of the ‘Financial Times’ wrote a few days after Obama’s triumph, “piling up support of protestant white men in the south does not amount to a winning strategy.”2 Obama was on the right side of American history