Obama Won On Ideas, Not Demographics

GOP's 'president pandered' argument a loser

Since Barack Obama won re-election, many Republicans have have offered up a number of different reasons about why the GOP took a good, old-fashioned butt kicking last Tuesday. With President Obama winning 332 electoral votes to Mitt Romney’s 206, right-wing and conservative pundits have blamed the loss on everything from Mitt Romney's faux-conservative stance, to the “Sandy and Chris” Show that effectively shut Romney out of national press for a week, while giving Obama the perfect platform to “look presidential.”

The loss was so catastrophic and so unanticipated that Mitt Romney didn’t even write a concession speech.

While on the “Today” show on Monday, conservative firebrand Newt Gingrich said that he was “dumbfounded” by the President’s win, and how he beat Romney more handedly than he did John McCain in 2008. The former Republican Speaker of the House went on to say "I was wrong last week, as was virtually every major Republican analyst. And so, you have to stop and say to yourself, if I was that far off, what do I need to learn to better understand America?"

Newsweek columnist David Frum had a different take on last week’s events, suggesting the right-leaning electorate has been hoodwinked by the “conservative entertainment complex” that ostensibly include the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Dick Morris, both of whom predicted a Romney win, or in Morris’ case, a “landslide” win. 

New York Times blogger and numbers guru Nate Silver called it right, and if you’re a believer in math and reason, it was all right there to see. The majority of polls that saw Obama heading toward reelection reflected a very different demographic set than what Obama and John McCain were dealing with four years ago, with the number of Latinos increasing, and the influence of the white vote shrinking. Former RNC Chair Michael Steele shared on MSNBC that, every month, 50,000 Latinos turn voting age, a claim first made by another GOP pundit and which Politifact finds is "mostly true." All this suggests that this wave of 600,000 new potential voters every year had to be courted by the GOP and not ostracized and marginalized by them, as they were in the Republican primaries. 

Loop 411: Women's Rights, Weed and Election 2012

Here's what we were talking about this week

In Their Own Words: Black Women Voters

Three young women film their views on why they vote and voted this year

Among the coalition of various voting blocs key to the reelection of President Barack Obama were women and African Americans, both of whom, early exit poll data showed, really turned out to support the president, Reuters reported.

[ALSO READ: Obama Wins Reelection]

Below, three women share videos of themselves discussing their reasons for voting after they went to the polls Tuesday.

It's your turn: Did you cast a ballot in this year's presidential race. Why did you vote? Tell us in the comments section.

Ciana Hamlett, 20, Bergenfield, N.J., first time voter whose family was among millions who lost power in Hurricane Sandy:

Diana Quaynor Stephen, 36, first time voter and new citizen of Olney, Md., filmed by 8-year-old son, Art, who accompanied her to the polls:

Alexis Taylor-Butler, 22, of Kansas City, Mo., who said women's reproductive rights issues drove her to the polls:

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'Sorry Romney You're Not Black, or Cool' Says Ad in Irish Newspaper

Paddy Power is already paying gamblers who bet on Obama and has taken out a controversial newspaper ad

A bookmaker that bills itself as "Europe's largest" is doubling down on its publicity stunt declaring Barack Obama the winner of the US presidential election, despite votes not yet being counted.

[ALSO READ:Famed Irish Betting Site Calls Race for Obama Two Days Early]

In a half-page advertisement in the Irish Times, Paddy Power issued an apology to Republican nominee Mitt Romney saying, "SORRY ROMNEY YOU'RE NOT BLACK, OR COOL. WE'RE PAYING OUT EARLY ON AN OBAMA VICTORY."

It's not just talk either. Irish newspaper The Journal reports that Paddy Power has already paid $830,000 to betters who put money on Obama.

[ALSO READ:Romney Takes the Lead in National Poll]

Some have called the ad racist, but Paddy Power spokesman Ken Robertson called such claims malarkey.

"The ad is a statement of fact – the President of the USA is black, and we’re saying he’s cool," Robertson told The Journal. "We’re not saying he’s cool because he is black – he’s cool because he’s the president of the free world, who hangs around with Jay-Z.  If that’s not cool, what is?"