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| President Barack Obama, joined by his wife Michelle, Vice President Joe
Biden and his spouse Jill,acknowledge applause after delivering his victory speech to supporters in Chicago |
After waiting patiently for more than five hours, the crowd at McCormick
Place near the heart of downtown Chicago, erupted in a reverberating
cheer as their newly-re-elected President, Barack Obama finally emerged
on stage accompanied by his wife and daughters.
Mr. Obama, his voice hoarse from a brutally relentless final week of the
campaign blitz, seemed equally fired up as he outlined his vision for
America’s future in an emotional speech. While he promised that “the
best is yet to come,” he equally appeared to call for bipartisan support
in tackling some of the country’s greatest current challenges.
He said, “By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and
dreams won't end all the gridlock, resolve all our problems or
substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the
difficult compromises needed to move this country forward.” Yet
offering a starting point for cooperation, he argued that “the common
bond” was where the two parties ought to begin.
That bond was however truly tested and stretched during many months of
campaigning, as conflicting views on every subject from job-creation to
women’s reproductive rights appeared to drive the two parties further
apart.
However, on Tuesday night, Mr. Obama sealed Mr. Romney’s fate when won
resoundingly in battleground states such as Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania,
New Hampshire, Colorado and Wisconsin. The outcome in Florida, Virginia
and Nevada was still not decided, yet Mr. Obama secured 303 electoral
college votes, well above the 270 required to win the presidency. Mr.
Romney cornered 206 votes.
Undisputed though his victory was, the President doubtless realised that
his strong mandate may be blunted yet again by a truculent
Congressional opposition, whose ranks hardly affected by the vote.
In the House of Representatives, specifically, Republicans succeeded in
maintaining their grip on the balance of power as they were projected by
the Associated Press to win 224 seats and were leading in 15 more. In
the Senate the Democrats managed to cling on to a total of 51 seats,
while the Republicans faced a slight reduction in their numbers, to 45
seats.
While Mr. Obama’s dramatic win this evening means that there will
unlikely be any further question of repealing his landmark healthcare
reform package nationally, he may well have to rely extensively on
Congressional support to pass further such game-changing legislation,
including comprehensive immigration reform.
He will also find himself in a profoundly challenging policy environment
again at the end of the upcoming “lame duck” session, when he will have
to sit down with members of Congress to thrash out a solution to the
looming fiscal cliff problem that could wreak havoc upon public
expenditures and lead to further economic hardships if unresolved.
Possibly indicating that forging a bipartisan consensus would be a top
policy agenda item for him, he noted in his victory speech, “Now, we
will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get [to our future]. As
it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and
starts. It's not always a straight line. It's not always a smooth path.”
House of Representatives Speaker, John Boehner seemed to echo this
sentiment when said in his reaction to Mr. Obama’s victory, “If there is
a mandate, it is a mandate for both parties to find common ground and
take steps together to help our economy grow and create jobs, which is
critical to solving our debt.” Yet Mr. Boehner was also keen to stay
close to his party’s core principles. He added, “The American people
also made clear there’s no mandate for raising tax rates.”
However Mr. Obama too put out a clear indication that he would not be
backing down from the fundamental values of the Democratic Party,
arguing. “We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened
by debt, that isn't weakened up by inequality, that isn't threatened by
the destructive power of a warming planet.”