From Dick Morris, conservative pundit on the 2012 election results: “The key reason for my bum prediction (for a Romney victory) is that I mistakenly believed that the 2008 surge in black, Latino, and young voter turnout would recede in 2012 to “normal” levels. Didn’t happen. I derided the media polls for their assumption of what did, in fact happen: That blacks, Latinos, and young people would show up in the same numbers as they had in 2008. I was wrong. They did.”
Thus spoke Dick Morris, inside the Beltway pundit who has been calling races, mostly wrong, for Republicans since 2000. It’s hard not to think back to the last time Mercury went retro on Election Night 2000. And how can we forget the violence, tragedy and greed that followed?
That last election night Mercury retrograde of 2000 led to our great apprehension here and elsewhere in the months and weeks preceding the 2012 Presidential election. We were and have been shell shocked.
But our anxiety was like so much mulch over a cluster of bulbs whose flowers we had yet to see, something was brewing underneath. As I commented in astrodem’s election night thread on the retrograde, I found myself reveling in this thought: It’s not who was elected, but who elected them. The majority who elected the President were people of color, followed by blacks, single women and young people. The age of the straight white male dominance in politics is drawing to a close. The Republicans played up that card and lost. Barack Obama is walking into his second term and there are more women senators in the US Congress than anytime else. The rising demographic across the country is brown, with Latinos leading the way. Just in time for the end of the Mayan Calendar at solstice. So fitting.