tana, ozzie coats and lorella. she came to the united states as an undocumented immigrant when she was ten years old. late tuesday night barack obama was re-elected to a second term as president of the united states. his victory was at the same time narrow and decisive. it was not just a victory for the president but a truly historic night for liberalism across the country. colorado legalized marijuana. maine, washington and maryland legalized gay marriage. the 113th congress will include the most female members ever and for the first time in history, women and minorities will hold a majority of the democratic party's house seats. in his victory speech president obama vowed to continue the work he began in his first term. >> america, i believe we can build on the progress we've made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. i believe we can keep the promise of our founders. the idea that if you're willing to work hard, it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love, it doesn't matter whether you're black or white or hispanic or asian ornatetive american or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in america if you're willing to try. >> the president's second term will no doubt be fraught with much of the same obstruction and frustration of the past four years, but after tuesday obama will have the opportunity to become one of the most celebrated president's in history. one who may years from now be seen as ushering a new era of liberal governance. he will have that in no small part thanks to his campaign. on wednesday a newly re-elected president obama stopped by to express his gratitude. >> these results, i felt that the work that i had done in running for office had come full circle. because what you guys have done, blue, red, the work that i'm doing is important. i'm really proud of that. i'm really proud of all of you. >> the obama who inspired the world during the 2008 election, the man who was notably absent for much of the last campaign reappeared over the last week. the real question now is whether he will stay. so tuesday night my big take aways from tuesday night in terms of what it meant and what the legacy is. a bunch of people noted that the economic recovery seems to be picking up and it seems like we may finally have the tires of the economy grip pavement and get going. and if that's the case, then that means that whoever was going to be the next president was likely going to inherit essentially recovery. that recovery was going to render a verdict on the previous four years, and i thought that people seemed very likely to me from a historical legacy perspective that if barack obama did not get re-elected and there was a recovery, then there would be this kind of carter comparison, which is that america tried liberal governments, it was a failure, it was in the doll drums, we had a recession, we never really got going, we elected mitt romney and, boom, 4 or 5% gdp growth and this is what free markets and american conservatism can do. i think now if there is a recovery, that recovery belongs to both barack obama and also in sort of an historical sense the liberal project, the democratic party, the policies he put in place. and i also think from a historical sense, it's funny to think that a few hundred thousand votes or a million votes if you kind of spread it out over the swing states is the difference between a legacy that would have always to youered in american history because of the historical nature of his presidency, with you nbut now il be one of the truly great presidencies, and i mean great in the loaded way that all great presidencies are which is complicated and shot through with terrible stuff and amazing stuff. and then finally, ovec, i'd like to hear your thoughts on this because you worked on this and obviously you were on the other side of this that evening, the affordable care act is going to be implemented. and, you know, my feeling about this is that was huge -- when i went to the polls just as a voter, that was a big part of what my vote was on because, you know, i think it's a flawed but good piece of legislation. i think it's an important step in american history. and what i like is that not just the human fact that 30 million people are going to get access to health insurance, 50 million added to the medicaid roles, but the fact that we're going to implement it and see if it works just from a basic democratic perspective. if it's a disaster, well the democrats are going to pay for it, they should pay for it. it's their bill. they're going to pay for it politically. if it's good, they're going to reap the gains. that to me seems like the way it should work. >> we were talking before the show about sometimes when policies fail why they failed is not obvious to everyone or the political case for why they failed isn't made. we talked about the financial crisis. some people say it was because of greedy bankers and some people say there were policy problems. problems with fan any and freddie, banking leverage, things like that. if the affordable care act fails will republicans be able to point out why it failed? for example, will it be because premiums are too high. things about access. there are problems with access to care if you're on medicaid. that didn't dissuade people from wanting to expand medicaid. if those problems continue will people be successful, will republicans be successful at paint being the bright picture as to why they feel. that remains to see. if something fails that doesn't mean it's a partisan victory for republicans. >> i think it's also hard to roll something back once it's in. dismantling it will prove a lot harder once it's in. >> what were your thoughts? what were your big take aways watching tuesday night's election? >> i think it's even larger than whether or not we're going to have an economic recovery. i think that's coming. we are going to grow, whether it was a liberal or conservative in the white house, who knows which one mitt romney was to this day, but we have some sort of recovery. what the real issue was for me on the ballot was who was going to have access to this economy and how. so women's reproductive rights was an issue because that is about my economic destiny. marriage equality was about marital parity. so i think a lot more things were on the ballot than simply more jobs, but who has access to welfare countrywide and why not. >> that echos the themes in that speech, which is the broadly inclusive america. what was on the ballot, inclusive or narrow. obviously i think people who are on the other side of this don't think that was the framing but i think that was the way the victory was framed certainly. >> to me, that was the historical area where we elected a black president. it's even more historic to re-elect a black president. beyond that, marriage equality. this was like, you know, if i say i will only fight you on my home field, i'll only fight you by my rules and then you come and you kick my you know what on that home field because, fran y frankly, i don't think that should be on the ballot. we were in a situation where that was the case, we won. we won, yeah. >> we won. i think that's just huge. it's absolutely guy began zblik lorella. >> i think there's been a tremendous amount of talk about the latino vote and the impact it has. i don't think there has been a lot of discussion about what made latinos vote in the way they did. that was a lot of voter mobilization. that was watching civic action happen and the delivery. it forced president obama to deliver on something months before the election to the constituency made a tremendous difference. >> you couldn't vote. >> i can't. >> i'm curious what that felt like on election day. >> so even though we could not vote. we were very committed to making sure that our community was informed, educated, and that they made their volt and that they pledged to vote with dreamers in mind. so we had a campaign going in key battleground states where we were knocking on doors and we were asking people to remember us on the day that they were going out to vote. and so while it was very frustrating to not -- you know, to be politically engaged in this, in my country, and not be able to go out and express who i want to run this country and to lead us, i think we had a tremendous amount of impact. >> that brings up our next big topic. this is one of the things that i think dominated the discussion after the election, which is the changing demographics of america, the changing faces of america and the respective coalitions that have come together around barack obama and the republican party particularly. i want to talk about why it's not the latino vote that tells us the most about the republican party's future. my story of the week right after this. 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[ male announcer ] the way it moves. the way it cleans. everything about the oral-b power brush is simply revolutionary. oral-b power brushes oscillate, rotate and even pulsate to gently loosen and break up that sticky plaque with more brush movements than manual brushes and even up to 50% more than leading sonic technology brushes for a superior clean. oral-b power brushes. go to oralb.com for the latest offers. my story of the week. identity politics and political identity. of all the surprising and revealing results from tuesday night, there is one relatively small bit of exit polling data that i think is the key to understanding the entire evening. you've probably heard by now that mitt romney won white voters by a sizeable margin while barack obama won up huge margins by african-americans and latinos. 71 to 27%. even wider than 2008 when he won them 67 to 31. what almost no one has noticed is what is to me the most shocking result. and that's how the two candidates did with asian-american voters. now, asian-americans made up a small sliver of the electorate, 3%. so the performance within that group doesn't necessarily carry with it massive ee lek torm consequences. asian-americans, are also according to the latest census, the fastest growing racial category. by mid century they will make up 9% of the country. asian-americans are the highest earning ethnicity with median incomes even higher than those of whites. you might have predicted that mitt romney would do well with them since he won with voters making more than $100,000 a year. he did not. he got creamed losing asian-american voters 73 to 26. this is a shocking result, not only because just 20 years ago george h.w. bush carried asian-americans comfortably or because the margin is so wide, but because the entire category of asian-american is so obviously construction there's little reason to suspect members of the group would vote with each other in any discern anybody pattern. think about it for a moment. what exactly do a filipino nurse in hartford, connecticut, and a pakistani oil man have. same can be said for latinos, even african-americans, heck, even gaffe white people. that's because race is a social construction, not something out there in the world but something we as a society create the rules, rhetoric, and identities for. and in the political process, nothing more assuredly creates firm political group identities than the experience of prejudice, contempt, marginal lieization and condescension. that is, in american history, the racial identity of those not classified as white tends to be forged in the furnace of contempt by the majority. that is the grand irony of this election and more broadly the predicament of the republican party. conservatives are creating their own electoral enemies. the beating heart of modern conservatism is its visceral appeal to anxiety and fears of white christians. this is a different statement than saying the beating heart of modern conservatism is white racism or white supremacy. it is not. it is simply white identity of politics. if you don't believe that, go read some conservative comment or click over to the fox news. they have the deepest anxieties of the moderate base. look at the ceaseless coverage of new black panthers, voter fraud and immigrants living high off the hog and the absolute frenzy whipped up over the ground zero mosque. once you understand this, you can see the republican party's problems are deeper than, say, opposition to comprehensive immigration reform or even the far left controversial dream act. that is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. the deeper issue is that for conservative politicians and conservative networks and web sites, there is simply too much to be gained by feeding the sense of persecution and siege that many white christians feel down to their toes. i'm not sure what is going to shift those incentives because that insecuritiy is real and it isn't going away. this does not mean demography is deaf. it's the construction of political identities that correlate to our racial categories is a dynomic category. it does not mean that democrats aren't assured some permanent ability in person pe tut. their ability to turn out their voters may wax and wane depending on the candidates in the election, but it does mean this, that the only way our politics avoids the increasingly ugly spectacle of a party attempting desperately to strengthen its appeal to a shrinking pool of white voters, is if the movement's leaders show genuine leadership and stop cultivating their bases worst instincts. johan comes in a porcelain vessel, crafted with care by a talented blonde from sweden. ♪ smooth, rich, never bitter, gevalia. 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the base of the republican party, the people who elect republicans to congress are often in these very, you know, maybe rural areas or areas where there's less minority concentration. i talk to conservative int lek actuals who don't interact with people who might have minority experience. you see it on natural view. you'll read stuff like if we have this policy, if we adopt this immigration policy we'll do better. because there's no school choice, if we advocate the school choice we'll win the black vote. i think what's missing is on multi-conservative. build relationships with people. when you build relationships, you have credibility. the policy comes second and the credibility comes from relationships. >> where were you three months ago? >> he was here the whole time. >> i think you're right about a lot of that, but there was a may 1970 "new york times" profile and a fellow named kevin phillips. he was a big aid to richard nixon. this was the stated policy. >> southern strategy. >> the southern strategy. we don't know what they called the negro vote. they did not account for you, for you, or for you. what they said was, if we keep this coalition together of the southern states, if we play to white populism, if we chain it together with some of these western territories, we can run this country with a white majority into the 21st century. they didn't count for it. they were shortsighted. they were wrong. it died tuesday night because a brand-new coalition of women, of gays, of african-americans, of la teenl knows, coming in and playing out their frn chies at the voting booth. there is a brand new coalition. i think that coalition will only grow really over time. the challenge now is for republicans, as you said, to go back and invest in the small seats. i know that i am an evangelical. >> you've told me on this program that you are not registered -- you're a registered independent. >> you can fw in and i can be a republican one day, the next primary i can be a democrat the next day. we don't have registration by party. there was a time in my life, the first 100 years after the passing of the 15th amendment, african-americans all voted republican from what is it 1870 clear up to 1970. >> right. >> we voted straight republican ticket. that began to erode after the southern strategy took hold and we never went back and so my grandmother, her grandmother, when they could vote voted for republicans. >> i say this, the mid 19th century republican party is the best political party america ever had. >> i'm going to open this up. i agree with everything you said about republicans and how they conducted the election, but you