Editor's letter: A new political landscape

last updated 8 January 2015

It was nearly two years ago that the 2012 election actually began, as a dozen Republicans jockeyed for the chance to unseat Barack Obama. Since then, we’ve run through 56 Republican primaries and caucuses, 11 Republican primary candidates vying to be the not-Mitt (we’ve missed you, Herman Cain), nearly $2 billion in spending by the campaigns of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, another $629 million in Super PAC spending, three mano a mano debates, more than 1 million TV ads, and approximately 100 gazillion words of speculation, analysis, opinion, and partisan dissembling. It has all served to prove two essential truths: America’s demographics are changing, and at the same time we remain a fundamentally centrist nation.

Obama won and Romney lost for many reasons, but mainly for those two. Whether you believe this is a center-right or center-left country, it’s indisputable that the center is where national elections are won. About 40 percent of the country now identify as independents. They distrust adamant ideologues and prefer politicians with common sense. What they want are policies that work. In the final month of this election, Romney nearly caught Obama when he ran away from the “severely conservative” positions he adopted during the primaries. But it was too late. To a majority of voters, particularly single women, Hispanics, socially liberal young people, and gays, a flawed Obama was the safer choice. Those voters “are no longer The Other,” as Jonathan Cohn points out in The New Republic this week. “They are the authentic face of America.” To win future national elections, Republicans will have to adapt to this new reality.