When was obama elected for his second term

Looking at the stubbornly high unemployment rate Obama inherited on taking office, many voters refused to accept the president's argument that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act had kept joblessness from rising even higher.

The new grassroots conservative Tea Party movement fueled a surge in turnout among Republican voters in even as participation among Obama's core constituencies in —young and African American voters—declined. On election day, the Republicans gained 6 seats in the Senate, reducing the Democrats' majority in that chamber from 18 59 to 41 to 6 53 to The GOP added 63 seats in the House of Representatives, enough to gain control of the House by a to majority in the th Congress.

With George W. In return, the GOP accepted President Obama's proposal to extend unemployment benefits for jobless workers for a longer period, and both parties embraced a one-year reduction in social security taxes for everyone who pays them. Republicans feared that federal courts were about to order immediate integration of homosexuals into the armed services. General Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, persuaded them that the military was prepared to accept the change if allowed to implement it gradually.

President Obama entered the election year with job approval ratings that were dangerously low roughly 40 percent and an unemployment rate that was dangerously high more than 8 percent for an incumbent seeking reelection. But, like Bill Clinton in and George W.

Bush in , Obama benefited enormously from not having to fight for his party's nomination. Gerald Ford in , Jimmy Carter in , and George Bush in had to wage such battles, and each of them was defeated by his general election opponent in November. In contrast, Obama was able to use the first eight months of to raise money, rebuild his campaign organization, develop lines of attack on his likely Republican opponents, and launch his general election campaign from a united, enthusiastic Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Caroline, in September Following the pattern of reelection-seeking presidents since the s, Obama chose Vice President Biden to run with him for a second term.

While Obama was uniting his party for the fall, the Republicans were waging a fierce intraparty battle to choose their nominee. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney won the nomination, but was subjected to severe attacks by his Republican rivals. Romney won the nomination and placated conservatives by choosing the chair of the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, as his vice presidential running mate in advance of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

But only then was he able to focus on raising money for the general election, move toward the more popular political center, and direct his campaign toward defeating Obama. The Supreme Court's decision in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission opened the floodgates to corporations, unions, and wealthy individuals to spend massive amounts of money in an effort to elect either Obama or Romney, as well as in the congressional elections.

Obama, like many incumbents, turned in a rusty and therefore ineffective performance. But, chastened by his weak showing, Obama came back strongly in the second and third debates and regained his lead over Romney. Toward the end of the campaign, the unemployment rate finally dipped below 8 percent, reinforcing Obama's claim that his economic policies had placed the nation on the road to prosperity.

Obama defeated Romney by 51 percent to 47 percent in the national popular vote and by to in the electoral vote. His margin of victory was down slightly from , making him the first president since Woodrow Wilson to be reelected by a smaller majority than in his first election.

Also disappointing to Obama, the House of Representatives remained in Republican control, by a margin to to Imran Khan. Shah Mahmood Qureshi. China Coronavirus. Taliban News. This story is from October 10, He was re-elected to that post in and In March , he shot to national prominence by winning the U. That November, Obama was elected to the U.

Senate in a landslide. On February 10, , in Springfield, Illinois, Obama officially announced his candidacy for president.

A victory in the Iowa caucuses in January made him a viable challenger to the early frontrunner, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York , whom he outlasted in a grueling primary campaign to claim the Democratic nomination in early June His team also worked to bring new voters—many of them young or Black, both demographics they believed favored Obama—to become involved in the election. Additionally, the campaign was notable for its unprecedented use of the Internet for organizing constituents and fundraising.

Of those 6. In terms of campaign issues, Obama pledged to get the United States out of the war in Iraq and expand health care, among other promises. On November 4, more than Obama was the first sitting U. On October 1, , many aspects of the Affordable Care Act implementation took effect, and the health insurance exchanges created by the Act launched as scheduled.

Much of the Affordable Care Act is funded by previously authorized and mandatory spending, rather than discretionary spending, and the presence or lack of a continuing resolution did not affect it.

Late in the evening of October 16, , Congress passed the Continuing Appropriations Act, , and the President signed it shortly after midnight on October 17, ending the government shutdown and suspending the debt limit until February 7, During the shutdown, approximately , federal employees were indefinitely furloughed put on temporary leave of absence and another 1.

The previous U. The day-long shutdown of October was the third-longest government shutdown in U. It was formed by a group of Congressmen many of whom are also part of the Republican Study Committee, another conservative House group as a smaller and more active group of conservatives. The caucus is sympathetic to the Tea Party movement. We support open, accountable and limited government, the Constitution and the rule of law, and policies that promote the liberty, safety and prosperity of all Americans.

The group started with these nine initial members, who set a criterion that new members must be willing to vote against Speaker of the United States House of Representatives John Boehner on legislation that the group opposed. The Caucus was involved in the resignation of Boehner on September 25, , and the ensuing leadership battle for the new Speaker.

Members of the Caucus who had voted against Boehner for Speaker felt unfairly punished, accusing him of cutting them off from positions in the Republican Study Committee and depriving them of key committee assignments. Boehner found it increasingly difficult to manage House Republicans with the fierce opposition of the Freedom Caucus, and he sparred with them over their willingness to shut down the government in order to accomplish goals such as repealing the Affordable Care Act.

Several court ruling through the 21st century paved the way for marriage equality to be realized in Describe the path towards marriage equality from Lawrence v. Texas , to United States v. Windsor , to Obergefell v. Shortly thereafter, the Supreme Court also ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act of was unconstitutional because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These decisions seem to allow legal challenges in all the states that persist in trying to block same-sex unions.

Lawrence v. Texas was a landmark decision in which the United States Supreme Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U. The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it had upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the 14th Amendment.

Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex or gender of the participants. The outcome of the case was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence.

United States v. Windsor was a landmark civil rights case in which the United States Supreme Court held that restricting U. Edith Windsor born and Thea Spyer — , a same-sex couple residing in New York, were lawfully married in Toronto, Canada, in The state of New York had recognized the marriage beginning in following a court decision. On November 9, , Windsor filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the U. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest.

The U. The case was carried further to the U. Obergefell v. Hodges was a landmark U. Supreme Court case in which the Court held in a decision that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U. Decided on June 26, , Obergefell overturned Baker v. Nelson, a case in which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that a state law limiting marriage to persons of the opposite sex did not violate the U.

Obergefell requires all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions; this legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States and its possessions and territories. The Court examined the nature of fundamental rights guaranteed to all by the Constitution, the harm done to individuals by delaying the implementation of such rights while the democratic process plays out, and the evolving understanding of discrimination and inequality that has developed greatly since Baker.

Prior to Obergefell, 36 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam already issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples. These obstacles take the form of discrimination in the workplace, by landlords, in health facilities, in education, and in public accommodations , violence, and disproportionate rates of poverty and homelessness, especially among transgender youth and transgender people of color.