"Our Republican party is too old and too white and too male," that comment from Republican stalwart Al Cardenas following Barack Obama's victory Tuesday night.
Cardenas was born in Cuba; he's a big player with the Republican Party in Florida and he's a powerful lobbyist in Washington. D.C. As an old white guy, I've got to say Cardenas is right.
That was one significant observation stemming from the U.S. election results, but there were many more and as Canadians and Canadian politicians look at the issues leading up to the U.S. general election there are a lot of lessons to be learned.
For openers, it's comforting to know we can hold an election in the second largest country in the world, and with minimal controversy, have the final results in hand by 10 p.m. on the West Coast. Watching the election in the U.S. we saw long line ups, polling stations running out of ballots and an electoral process that looked more like something you'd see in some third-world dictatorship.
Getting back to Cardenas and his demographic warning, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has to take notice of the reality of today's electorate and how it can be moved. In analysing Tuesday's results it was apparent there was more to this than just the second-term win of America's first African- American president. In the U.S. race a number of voting patterns emerged. Women's issues, particularly those involving reproductive health, became a focus. The anti-abortion advocates lost. Three states, including Washington, our immediate neighbour to the south, approved the recreational use of marijuana. A record number of women - 20 - were elected to the 100-seat U.S. Senate.
Two measures allowing for same-sex marriages were approved in Maine and Maryland. Wisconsin elected an openly gay Senator, a first in the U.S. Minorities were engaged; blacks, Hispanics and young voters turned out to vote in droves. That turnout just doesn't happen on a whim. Parties and political organizations worked at their target supporters and impressed upon those people the advantage of showing up at the ballot box and insuring their vote was counted.
If you watched the TV coverage Tuesday afternoon you would have seen long lines of voters waiting to cast their ballots. In many cases those lines were predicted to be two or more hours long, yet those voters hung in and made their vote count.
Relating all this to our side of the border, Stephen Harper won his first majority last year and after a political post-mortem it was found Harper and the Conservative Party had the support of older voters concerned with our national economic stability. It was also found that younger people and those with more left-leaning tendencies did not vote.
Good stuff, if you're a Conservative. But if you're not it means you've got some work to do and therein lies the message from Tuesday's American election.
In love, war and politics, hard work counts. Barack Obama and his advisors put together a focused and massive campaign. The country was failing middle-class and poorer people. Unemployment was stubbornly high but for many the Republican Party offered little in the way of a remedy. Helping the Obama cause was the Republican candidate Mitt Romney, a millionaire businessman who was portrayed as being out-of-touch with the issues. The other Republican misfit was the Tea Party element which took an interesting slice of American history and used it as a title for a right-wing gang of throwbacks bent on rescinding the 20th century.
So let's ponder our next federal campaign in 2015, but through the lens of last Tuesday's U.S. results. I bet Justin Trudeau will win the Liberal leadership and here we go again, Trudeaumania 45 years later. But, our next Canadian election will go to the best organized. We don't have a large Afro-American or Hispanic population, but we do have aboriginals emerging as a political force. Us old white guys are a diminishing group, but most Canadians are still concerned with the economy and national stability. The experience of a local pipeline approval tells us the environment is becoming a pivotal issue.
Who knows what other questions will rise to the surface in 2015, but one thing for sure, the party who best relates to the electorate will form government. Politically, the U.S. election shows us there's only one place to be and that's in the middle. Plus, there has to an effective on-the-ground organization. That's how Green MP Elizabeth May won her Saanich-Gulf Islands seat.
To many, the U.S. election was a surprise. To others simply the result of understanding the serious issues facing the nation, putting a campaign together that focused on those problems and identifying voters who believed in your platform. Simple isn't it? It should be. Three years from now we'll see if anyone in Canada was paying attention.
