A Stunning Victory. Now What?
In These Times editors around the country react to Barack Obama’s historic victory
By In These Times editors

Obama’s stunning breakthrough election as the first African-American president — at a time when he is the only black U.S. senator — is a testament to his personal qualities and the sophistication of his campaign. It obviously owes a lot to the well-earned unpopularity of Bush’s policies, which contributed to the financial crash.

But America had also changed: young white people are less racist; there’s a growing Latino vote; black voters felt energized and inspired; the growing ranks of highly educated voters are more liberal. It just hasn’t changed enough: a majority of whites voted for McCain (bolstered by Southern whites and thus reflecting a persistence of regional patterns, despite some Obama breakthroughs where the South is changing the most demographically), and older whites, despite their sense of misdirection for the country, also favored McCain.

Although 60 percent of voters earning under $50,000 a year favored Obama, giving him the margin of victory as higher-income voters split evenly, a slim 51 percent majority of lower-income whites favored McCain. Even though Obama did better among whites than Kerry or Gore. Higher-income whites voted by a wider 56 to 43 percent margin for McCain, but Obama failed to capture the share of lower-income whites’ votes he should have, if a variety of cultural issues had not overshadowed their economic interests.

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