Reasons for Obama's Victory and Romney's Defeat

 Barack Obama's re-election to another four-year term as the 44th president of the United States was no surprise, at least to Democrats and denizens of liberal news organizations. But for a solid month -- both nationally and in the highly contested battleground states -- the race was virtually tied.

It didn't end in a tie, however. Despite the closeness of the national popular vote, Obama and Joe Biden eked out victories over Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in the hotly contested states of New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado and (though not yet officially) Florida, giving Democrats a 100-vote cushion in the Electoral College. In the end, after both sides waged the most expensive campaign in U.S. history, all Romney did was flip two states, Indiana and North Carolina, from Obama’s 2008 column into his own.

It wasn’t nearly enough, but the Republican ticket’s razor-thin losses in those battleground states indicate that this outcome was not foreordained. And as Al Gore and George W. Bush learned in 2000, if you win -- or lose -- a race this close, there are a hundred pivot points that explain the result.

Here are 21 of them:

1. “Waiting on the World to Change” -- Still. It was February 2007, but it seemed like the 1960s at George Mason University’s Johnson Center, where students swayed to John Mayer’s generational anthem and students called out “I love you!” to freshman Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.

Five-and-a-half years later, Mitt Romney visited the same Northern Virginia campus, drawing a large and enthusiastic crowd. Yet when the votes were counted Tuesday night, the Democratic ticket of Barack Obama and Joe Biden again piled up historically large majorities among under-30 voters. The margin among millennials wasn’t as large as in 2008, but his edge of 60-36 percent, according to exit polls, was big enough to put the president over the top. It also bodes well for Democrats -- and poorly for Republicans – in the future.

2. Amigos de Obama: Early in the Republican primary season, Romney proffered “self-deportation” as a partial policy prescription for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants living in this country. Romney’s rhetoric was aimed at Rick Perry, who had signed legislation granting in-state college tuition to young people brought to Texas as children.

This line of argumentation hurt Perry, but Newt Gingrich criticized Romney for it, as did the president. Obama, by contrast, embraced the DREAM Act, which would grant a path to citizenship for young immigrants, even those in the country illegally, who enlisted in the armed forces or attended college.

After Romney was nominated, the president signed an executive order barring the deportation of illegal minors. It was mostly symbolic (and perhaps not even legal), but it was politically savvy, and Latino voters noticed. Nationally, Obama received a whopping 69 percent of the Hispanic vote -- an even higher percentage than in 2008 -- and, with it, the swing states of Florida, Colorado, and Nevada.

Even more ominous for Republicans: George W. Bush won 40 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2004; McCain won 31 percent in 2008; Romney garnered only 27 percent this year, even as their share of the electorate has grown from 8 to 10 percent.

3. The Auto Bailout: The Obama administration’s move to bolster Chrysler and General Motors with multibillion-dollar government loans and guarantees set several things in motion. For starters, it made carrying Michigan, Romney’s home state, problematic for Republicans.

In the end, it also provided a layer of asbestos to Obama’s firewall in Ohio, which held up against Romney and Ryan’s desperate charge in the Buckeye State over the final weeks of the campaign.

Romney’s father was a popular governor of Michigan, a 1968 presidential candidate, and the CEO of a car company. But with even Ford Motor Company’s president supporting the bailout of his competitors (he was worried about Ford’s own suppliers), Romney’s connection to the state seemed weaker than Obama’s. In 2011 and 2012, Chrysler ran evocative Super Bowl ads emphasizing the comeback narrative. The 2011 edition was set to music by Eminem. This year’s was narrated by Clint Eastwood.

“The people of Detroit know a little something about this,” says the gravelly voiced film star. “They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together. Now Motor City is fighting again.”

Obama is not referenced directly in the ad, but he doesn’t have to be. After talking about problems caused by “the fog of division, discord and blame,” Eastwood adds: “We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one. Detroit's showing us it can be done.”

4. Romney’s Take on the Auto Bailout: In a 2008 op-ed for the New York Times that Romney’s staff swears the ex-governor wrote himself, Romney advocated a “managed bankruptcy” for the troubled car maker, with the federal government assuring “guarantees for post-bankruptcy financing” as the companies emerged from Chapter 11. Romney also called for management “as is” to be replaced.

All of this was subsequently done -- even down to replacing the troubled car companies’ executives: The task force appointed by Obama replaced the troubled automakers’ management. So why the perception that Romney opposed the president?

Three reasons, mostly. First, while Romney wanted to use bankruptcy to rein in the United Auto Workers, Obama used the process to reward the unions, and strengthen them. Second, instead of embracing what the president and he had in common, Romney harped on the differences in their approach. The third was . . .

5. The New York Times’ Take on Romney’s Take on the Bailout: The problem here was the headline, which read simply, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” That wasn’t inaccurate, exactly, but it was very nearly the opposite of the piece’s tenor.

“I love cars, American cars,” Romney wrote. “I was born in Detroit, the son of an auto chief executive. In 1954, my dad, George Romney, was tapped to run American Motors when its president suddenly died. The company itself was on life support -- banks were threatening to deal it a death blow. The stock collapsed. I watched Dad work to turn the company around -- and years later at business school, they were still talking about it.”

Romney would reprise this theme in his third debate with Obama, only to be met with eye rolls and interruptions from the president, who took to the hustings the next day to accuse his opponent of having “Stage 3 Romnesia.”

There is some evidence that this line of attack was effective. Romney never seriously competed for Michigan -- he probably would have been better served setting up his headquarters there -- and the ripple effects in Ohio were evident: Exit polls showed that by a 59-36 percent margin voters approved of the auto bailout, and by implication, disapproved of their perception of Romney’s stance. The upshot was that Romney failed to carry either his native Michigan or his adopted home state of Massachusetts, and no presidential nominee has ever won without carrying his home base.

6. Killing Osama bin Laden: It happened way back in May 2011, when the Republican presidential field was still forming, but its ramifications became clear as the consulate in Libya lay smoldering 16 months later.