Romney concedes defeat

Republican candidate Mitt Romney has conceded defeat in the race for the White House.

Romney concedes defeat

Republican candidate Mitt Romney has conceded defeat in the race for the White House.

He said: "I have just called President Obama to congratulate him on his victory.''

Mr Romney said Mr Obama faced major challenges, adding: ``I pray the president will be successful in guiding our nation.''

Barack Obama’s victory means his economic vision is still alive and about to drive the political conversation with his adversaries. The legacy of his first term is safe and enshrined to history.

Mr Obama will push for higher taxes on the wealthy as a way to shrink a choking debt and to steer money toward the programmes he wants. He will try to land a massive financial deficit-cutting deal with Congress in the coming months and then move on to an immigration overhaul, tax reform and other bipartisan dreams.

He will not have to worry that his health care law will be repealed, or that his Wall Street reforms will be gutted, or that his name will be consigned to the list of one-term presidents who got fired before they could finish.

Yet big honeymoons do not come twice and Republicans will not swoon.

And if Mr Obama cannot end gridlock in Washington, his second term will be reduced to veto threats, empty promises, attempts to bypass Congress and legacy-sealing forays into foreign lands.

Voters decided to put back in place all the political players who have made Washington dysfunctional to the point of nearly sending the United States of America into default for the first time ever.

The president will probably be dealing again with a Republican-run House of Representatives, whose leader, Speaker John Boehner, declared on election night that his party is the one with the mandate: no higher taxes.

Mr Obama will still have his firewall in the Senate, with Democrats likely to hang onto their narrow majority. But they don’t have enough seats to keep Republicans from bottling up any major legislation with delaying tactics.

So the burden falls on the president to find compromise, not just demand it from the other side.

For now, he can revel in knowing what he pulled off.

Mr Obama won despite an economy that sucked away much of the nation’s spirit. He won with the highest unemployment rate – at 7.9% – for any incumbent since the Great Depression of the 1930s. He won even though voters said they thought Mr Romney would be the better choice to end stalemate in Washington.

He won even though a huge majority of voters said they were not better off than they were four years ago – a huge test of survival for a president.

The suspense was over early because Mr Obama won all over the map of battleground states, and most crucially in Ohio. That is where he rode his bailout support for the car industry to a victory that crushed Mr Romney’s chances.

The reason is that voters wanted the president they knew. They believed convincingly that Mr Obama, not Mr Romney, understood their woes of college costs and insurance bills and sleepless nights. Exit polls showed that voters viewed Mr Obama as the voice of the poor and the middle class, and Mr Romney as tilting toward the rich.

Formidable and seasoned by life, Mr Romney had in his pocket corporate success and a Massachusetts governor’s term and the lessons of a first failed presidential bid.

But he never broke through as the man who would secure people’s security and their dreams. He was close the whole time.

The election was never enthralling, and it was fought for far too long in the shallow moments of negative ads and silly comments.

It seemed like the whole country endured it until the end, when the crowds grew and the candidates reached for their most inspiring words.

“Americans don’t settle. We build, we aspire, we listen to that voice inside that says ’We can do better,” Mr Romney pleaded toward that end.

Americans agreed. They just wanted Mr Obama to take them there.

Incumbents get no transition, so Mr Obama will be tested immediately.

A “fiscal cliff” of expiring tax cuts and automatic budget cuts looms on January 1.

If they kick in, economists warn the economy will tank, again. Mr Obama, at least, won the right to fight the fight on his terms.

“If I’ve won, then I believe that’s a mandate for doing it in a balanced way,” he said before the election – that is, fixing the budget problem by raising taxes on people instead of just cutting spending.

He had not even been declared the winner before Mr Boehner offered a warning that the House was still in Republican hands.

“With this vote,” Mr Boehner said, “the American people have also made clear that there is no mandate for raising tax rates.”

Mr Obama, never one to lack from confidence, is ready to take that fight to Congress.

In his eyes, he just won it, thanks to the voters.

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