There's been a lot of post-election hand-wringing about how the Republicans can "reach out" to minority voters. If they can't win just by energizing their shrinking base of white people, what's next? Immigration reform? Marco Rubio? What's it going to take?

At the same time, you have former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan blaming the Romney loss on voters from "urban areas." Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
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It is lobbying week in Washington DC. Tuesday was labor’s day at the White House. Wednesday it was the turn of the business community. Friday it will be the usual politicians – Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, Pelosi, Reid – in other words, the usual political gridlock masquerading as democracy in action.[1] Compromises packaged as grand bargains, plus the usual brinkmanship on federal spending and the debt ceiling. It will be as though the election had never happened. [Read more]

 So, Luke, remember your dad, Tim Russert?  Let's say he's sitting in a press room where House minority leader Nancy Pelosi is taking questions after announcing that she's staying put and is really excited about the next term, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  Let's say he notices that she isn't alone up there on that podium; he sees there are maybe a dozen women who hold seats in the House of Representatives.  They're standing behind her.
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Fascinating piece in The LA Times about a call that Mitt Romney had with his donors.  Romney basically repeats the 47% argument, without the blunt language.  Obama won, says Romney, because he turned out throngs of people who want health care and the possibility of student loan forgiveness.

For example:

"Romney argued that Obama’s healthcare plan’s promise of coverage 'in perpetuity' was 'highly motivational' to those voters making $25,000 to $35,000 who might not have been covered, as well as to African American and Hispanic voters." [Read more]

I saw a friend of mine today who happens to be a Veteran. I asked him if he had partaken of any of the free meals for Veterans offered by many of the local restaurants.

Well, he said, he hadn't really even thought of it before stopping to get a bite on Monday. And then he kinda grinned and I knew there was a story to be told.

Brian and his wife had stopped at a Culver's on Veteran's Day and were waiting in line behind an elderly woman. They really weren't paying attention until they heard the woman ask if it was necessary for her husband to come into the store to get his free ice cream sundae. [Read more]

David Petraeus's downfall at the CIA, resigning after his marital infidelity was exposed, has gotten the kind of press coverage generally reserved for winning the Nobel Prize or becoming the first man on Mars. Story after story about his resignation rhapsodizes about the greatness of Petraeus, his military brilliance, his reputation for "probity and integrity." He is hailed as the model of a modern general, without a whiff of Gilbert & Sullivan irony in that phrase. Some people even single out the resignation itself as a sign of Petraeus's lofty sense of honor, as if why he was resigning had nothing to do with it. [Read more]

Hi all.  Just wanted to say thank you for the dialogue in the blogs about the recently-concluded elections.  It was an exciting and sometimes harrowing ride, through the conventions, the debates, and a strange Election Day and night.  

While doing so, I thought it fair to point out that for the second cycle in a row, yours truly outpicked Larry Sabato and Nate Silver in the Senate races, and in this cycle, the Presidential as well. [Read more]

Late in the week, The Daily called with the kind of assignment that no opinion writer could turn down.  Obama has a chance to be the Reagan of the left, they said.  If he gets a reasonable amount of what he wants in his second term, what will America look like?  Writing this longer essay was an exercise in optimism and, though I tried to be realistic, I also found it kind of a tonic for cynicism.  Things can get better, with just the ideas that Obama has expressed and hinted at. [Read more]

At 78, Roth says he hasn't written anything of substance in 3 years and that 2010's Nemesis will have been his last novel.  Oddly enough, I picked up P [Read more]

The pundits are pondering. They mention mandates and movements, margins and maneuvers and meetings in the middle. They wax wisely on who won and why they won and which way the wind will waft on Wednesday.

We love to mock them, these prattling experts and prognosticators. And yet we listen, we read, we react. We can't help ourselves. We want to know what it all means and what will happen next. We are determined to squeeze great meaning from great events. We are all pundits.

But the truth is that the great election of November 7, 2012, was all but meaningless. It represents neither a pivot point nor a portent. A poor candidate lost to a strong candidate, as as he was expected to do. A diverse majority of Democrats in the Senate will continue to play a weak hand weakly. A militant majority of Republicans in the House will continue to obstruct, ignoring calls for moderation as they have done for two decades. The federal government will hobble feebly along. [Read more]

It's noon and the Dow is down over 300 points (about 2.4% in this age of big numbers) and so, if it hasn't started already, people are going to try to say that the markets are rejecting the public's choice of a second Obama term, and of a larger Democratic majority in the Senate, or both of those things. [Read more]

President Obama won a second term last night and it wasn't even a squeaker.  The Senate and the House stayed pretty much the same, but Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin and Tammy Duckworth are going to Washington. 

Joe Walsh, Richard Mourdock and Todd Akin will wander off into an oblivion they so richly deserve.  

Karl Rove was seen on Fox howling foul over Ohio with such naked grief his election night companions could only look on, astonished. 

Donald Trump threw such an incomprehensible hissy fit on Twitter you just had to know the little guy was not happy. [Read more]

I finished up by 9 PM and was happy to get home and tired.  There was only a few precincts that had lines here when the polls closed in my county and they moved along so we were able to get everyone picked up by 8 PM to go home.  We kept hearing stories come out of Miami/Dade area with many hours wait.  I was so thrilled that the President said "we are going to fix that."  It is time for congress to add a law against making people stand in line for hours to vote to the Voters Rights Act.  Enough is enough.  We have to start holding officials accountable for targeting urban areas and just plain incompetency. I hope he follows through. [Read more]

In a veer to reality-based elections, Nate's total prediction this time, 49 right last gives us hope that the effects of the chattering class will be diminished next time.

After chumps like Dick Morris blew all credibility (did they have any left?) proclaiming a blowout to be, when any casual glance at the ground games in needed states proved it hoo-hah? [Read more]

One of the interesting things about voting is that there isn't a good reason for it, especially from the perspective of modeling human behavior that's common in fields like economics.  In order to illustrate why this is true, I've put today's Presidential election into a simple game theory framework:

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For those interested, I'm doing a live-blog of Fox News Election coverage all day today. I will likely be in a home for the criminally insane tomorrow, but i do it for you.

--WKW

In an age where we can pull $1000 out of any ATM worldwide, it's absurd that we're stuck in an age-old tradition of going to a particular precinct on a particular day to stand in a pretty retro booth to vote.

There's no reason not to have voting places where everyone can vote if we can't just do it via our mobile phones (yes, there are considerations for voting fraud, but as new last minute software for Ohio machines shows, we have this to contend with anyway). [Read more]

5 AM EST.
I'm up and already nervous about what this election night will bring.  I want the Democrats to win everything.  I want the Republicans to lose in numbers large enough to show them the error of their ways.  I'm so biased that way there's no pretending otherwise.  I know it won't happen, but if I were wishing upon a star it's what I would be wishing for.

I'm an old-style liberal--a dreamer, an optimist, a pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna.  There aren't many of us left, mainly because that kind of nonsense has been knocked out of the more sensible of us.  With me it's still there, and at this late stage I have a feeling it's here to stay.
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George W. Bush, former president. War criminal it has even been asserted at times. While individual tellings may differ in detail and specific focus, the point of these assertions usually revolve around a global network of secret prisons set up by Bush's national security apparatus - and the unfortunate actions that took place in them. [Read more]

To vote in Ohio on Tuesday, November 6, 2012, you will need to bring a form of identification, either your driver's license or something that has your name and current address. If you're confused about where to go to vote, you can go to GottaVote Ohio or to the Ohio Secretary of State's webpage. Those sources also have information about the kind of ID you'll need to vote. [Read more]