The Challenges and Opportunities of a Second Obama Administration
Wade Henderson
Commentary
By any measure, the 2012 election was a watershed moment in American democracy.
President Obama’s re-election validated his first term and preserved his signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), along with the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act and many other important achievements that the civil and human rights community championed.
Voters also elected more women and people of color to Congress than ever before, as well as the first openly LGBT person to the U.S. Senate, Tammy Baldwin.
There is no question that the 2012 election reaffirmed the tremendous power of the vote. Despite all the money spent and the sophisticated voter suppression campaign that was designed to make it harder to register and to vote, the American people showed up anyway to make their voices heard, challenging the proposition that money would be the deciding factor in the election. Some people stood in lines for nearly eight hours in places like Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania to cast their vote.
The power of the votes of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, young people, women, and voters with disabilities in the 2012 election confirmed our hopes coming out of the 2008 election—that the profound demographic shifts taking place in our country could be harnessed to create a new coalition of voters whose voices cannot be ignored.
But the 2012 election also revealed what many of us in the civil and human rights community have long understood: that our electoral system is outdated, inefficient, confusing, and difficult for citizens to easily navigate. One of our highest priorities for the 113th Congress is to push for comprehensive electoral reform that includes many of the concepts included in the Voter Empowerment Act, introduced by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D. N.Y., in the Senate and Rep. John Lewis, D. Ga., in the House of Representatives, such as the restoration of voting rights of citizens with past criminal convictions; permanent and portable voter registration within states; online registration; election day registration to correct errors; early in-person voting; and a bar against deceptive practices in the electoral process.
The conventional wisdom coming out of the election is that immigration reform is the next big piece of legislation that Congress will tackle—and that it is practically a done deal. But we know that even with the increasing strength of the Latino and Asian American vote, passing legislation this complex and this important is very difficult. Our coalition will need to find ways to help bridge the deep divisions among our elected officials if we are to see the kind of smart and humane reforms that our nation needs.
Our nation’s immigration system must be reformed to better reflect the needs of the economy and society, to promote immigrant integration, to provide a pathway to citizenship for long-time resident immigrants, and to recognize the tremendous contribution of all immigrants to the United States. These principles, rather than the framework of protecting our borders, must undergird reform efforts.
And we clearly have to do something about the ongoing jobs crisis. Congress must introduce a plan to preserve and create good jobs for all people in the U.S., with targeted assistance to the underserved communities who have been hardest hit by the Great Recession and the sluggish economic recovery. We need to create the kind of economy that enables every person to benefit from sustained, long-term growth that’s good for our nation, good for our communities, and good for our families, and we know how to do it—we just need the will to do so.
In addition, there are a number of bills that have been pending in Congress for far too long and should be passed as quickly as possible, including the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would amend the Equal Pay Act to strengthen remedies and enforcement and limit employer defenses of wage discrimination; the End Racial Profiling Act, which would prohibit law enforcement agencies from using racial profiling; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity; and the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which would restore the rights of older workers facing age discrimination to what they have been for decades while ensuring a consistent standard for all employees facing employment discrimination or retaliation.
We also will need to redouble our efforts to push the Obama administration to pick up the pace of nominations and to stop Senate Republicans from keeping thoughtful, well-qualified nominees from getting a confirmation vote on the floor. This was an area of tremendous challenge for us during Obama’s first term and it is likely to be just as challenging in his second.
Americans don’t always pay a lot of attention to nominations to our federal courts. But with the recent decisions in the Arizona S.B. 1070 and ACA cases, the attention that Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin drew last October, and the likely attention that we will see this year when the Supreme Court considers Shelby County, AL vs. Holder, a challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and two marriage equality cases, we have a real opportunity to remind all Americans that the courts are vital to protecting and advancing civil and human rights in the United States.
This year, we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While the nation will remember it as one of the defining moments in U.S. and world history, we must also remember that it was the culmination of an abolitionist movement that pushed President Lincoln to become one of our greatest presidents.
If our nation is to be as great as its ideals, the civil and human rights community will need to push Obama in the same way. A second Obama administration term provides our community with many opportunities that we must seize.
Because despite all that has been accomplished, there is still so much more to be done.
Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.
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