Hope Has Died, Not Change

The recent elections in the U.S. were a referendum for Obama, but the Republicans shouldn’t feel so exulted that they forget that their policies for eight hegemonic years in the White House were the cause of many of today’s problems.

“Hope” and “Change” were the most popular campaign slogans in U.S. election history, embodied by Barack Obama. That vigorous message of faith and transformation changed the political map then and catapulted the current president to stardom. It was felt by the country’s disdained minorities and gained sympathy from other nations, whether ally or foe.

Obama represented the expectations to modify domestic politics, and especially international policy as represented by George Bush. At the beginning of his presidency, he enjoyed the euphoria of groups hardly taken into account — the youth, Hispanics, blacks, the poor and women — on top of people and governments from such polar opposite ideological standpoints and locations as Cuba, Iran and Japan, or unknown countries like Turkmenistan.

Two years later, the message of the electorate was resounding. Time and unfulfilled promises made hope vanish, and now there is real change coming — not just rhetorical — to the United States government. And while it had nothing to do with presidential elections, it was a referendum on Obama’s term. From there, a few hours after the [Democratic] defeat, he accepted it as his own in a message on Twitter: “What the American people are expecting — and what we owe them — is to focus on the issues that affect their jobs, their security and their future.”

The failures Obama accumulated throughout his first two years were many. None were as important as the lack of job creation and the economic insecurity that made voters switch sides in favor of the Republicans — giving them leadership in the House of Representatives and other governing bodies, councils and city halls, historical bastions for Democrats, as well as the sympathy of minorities who before were also ignored by [the Republicans].

In politics, when the economy is described as being in a recession or depression, and unemployment remains stable at around 10 percent, aside from the millions in the stimulus package, other achievements that could have a great impact on the future — such as health care reform, changes in the law that impede greed and corruption on Wall Street, the gradual withdrawal of troops in Iraq or keeping terrorists away from national territory — go unnoticed.

What happened to Obama was expected and predicted. Hence, his propaganda did not appeal much to the achievements of his administration, but rather to asking minorities to vote for Democrats to help them win. But the problem is that minorities are the ones with the highest percentage of unemployment, the ones that have lost their homes in a real estate bubble that still hasn’t burst, the ones who saw their taxes rise for reasons unknown and who saw their dreams of a secure pension vanish into thin air, with a public pension system adrift and a private one that continues to consume more interest and capital.

Issues concerning their wallets are what, like almost always, were most important to the general population, and they shifted the political map. The other issues — such as marijuana, illegal immigration, the loss of foreign markets, or if the troops should come home from Iraq or be moved to Afghanistan — while also important, enter into the political zigzag.

“Republicans and your neoconservative members of the ‘tea party,’ be warned that this election was not a vote against Obama, but against bad policies of any kind.”