Scope and Change in Obama's Victory

The significance of Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president is more dramatic in its historical change than in terms of the size of his victory.

Frankly, Obama's triumph falls far short of what folks thinkwhen they hear of an "electoral landslide"; and while I haven't seen journalists speak of the Democrats in those terms, left-wing partisans can't find enough chances to announce a "realignment," or a "repudiation" of GOP rule that's left conservatives "irrelevant."

As Michael Cooper reported today, Tuesday's results were less a blowout than a call for change:

One of the many ways the election of Barack Obama differed from recent presidential elections was that in the end, it did not all come down to one state.

The addition on Thursday of the electoral votes from North Carolina — a state that had not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 — brought Mr. Obama’s total to 364, well above the 270 needed to win the presidency and the 162 won by Senator John McCain.

The final 2008 Electoral College tally is still not known because Missouri, which has 11 electoral votes, and Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, which has one, are still considered too close to call. (Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that do not allocate their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.)

So how does Mr. Obama’s 364, which could go as high as 376, measure up?

“It’s a normal win,” said John C. Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who edited “After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College.” Mr. Fortier called it a respectable, solid mandate.

“It was not a blowout and not a really close election,” he said. “We got a little bit used to these close elections. Until 2005, we were legitimately talking about a 50-50 nation, where everything was close.”

Mr. Obama’s commanding victory does break the habit of decidedly close contests of the last two election cycles. This time around, there was none of the hand-wringing, nail-biting or teeth-gnashing that followed the 2004 election, which the Democrats could have won if they had carried Ohio. And certainly none of the conceding, unconceding, recounts, halted recounts and Supreme Court intervention of 2000 election, which the Democrats could have won if they had carried Florida or any of a number of other states.

For a real blowout, think of the 523 electoral votes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt won in 1936, when he ran against Alf Landon, who won eight. Or more recently the 525 electoral votes President Ronald Reagan won in 1984, when Walter F. Mondale won only 13. Or the 520 President Richard M. Nixon won in 1972 against George McGovern, who won 17. Those were the widest electoral vote margins.

For leftists, it's the disarray of the conservative movement that's important, but it would be a mistake to speak of "irrelevance." In fact, Barack Obama will have his hands full with a determined GOP Senate minority perfectly happy to block the extravagant policy demands of the party's far left-wing contingents, notes Kimberley Strassel:

Democrats won big on Tuesday but not big enough. The voters' rebuke of the GOP was brutal, though not so cruel as to hand Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid the 60 votes they needed to grease a sweeping agenda. The GOP still owns a filibuster, and that is as big a factor in this new "era" as is our president-elect.

Even the "repudiation" meme is more chest-thumping than substance.

The Democrats offered the electorate literally a once-in-a-lifetime candidate. Barack Obama will be formidable in 2012 when he seeks reelection, but should he retain the office, the Democrats will find him a hard act to follow. There's little evidence that 2008 constitutes a poltical realignment, although the leftists believe that if they can drill their spin into the minds of the media and the voters, the party's natural propensity to overreach will be overlooked.