What Does It All Mean? Open Thread on Yesterday’s Results

Please use this as an open thread for your comments.  Our new Managing Editor, Bradford Queen, and I will be giving updates in this space, and our Contributing RPs will be posting their thoughts as the day progresses.  — The RP

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Fewer than 12 hours after President Obama delivered his re-election victory speech, attention is beginning to turn to the next big task in Washington: the fiscal cliff.

Jonathan Allen writes in POLITICO: “The election hardly amounted to a mandate for change. Instead, it will be the same players gathered around the negotiating table – or refusing to negotiate – as the government tries to deal with a pending fiscal calamity that includes the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, the end of Obama’s payroll tax cut, a steep reduction in defense and domestic spending known in Washington-speak as ‘sequestration’ and a debt that exceeds $16 trillion.”

Will House Republicans, Senate Democrats, and the President be able to work out a deal? In whose court is the proverbial ball? –BQ

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More winners and losers.

Obvious winners yesterday: Barack Obama. In Ohio & Michigan, the auto bailout. Twitter = major win, as more than 31 million tweets were tweeted  (twits a’tweeting?) over the course of Election Day and Night.

Losers: Mitt Romney. Republican demographic strategy. Super PAC money. Debate moderators.

Debate it. Winners and losers. –BQ

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The biggest winner yesterday?  New York Times poll analyst Nate Silver. Or perhaps more fairly, the triumph of math, science and rationality over superstition and biased political prognostication.  Silver’s predictions — based on the wealth of polling that was performed every day across the country — were dead on.  Polling is not a perfect science, but math teaches us that when there are enough polls to average, weigh, and analyze, an accurate picture emerges as to where the voters stand.  This is the sample principle of crowd-sourcing which I believe is the future of news, research, and progress.  And it is no irony that those who deny science when it comes to climate change were the same people who were denying the power of Silver’s math. — The RP

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Two of my pet issues — marriage equality and marijuana legalization — had a good night last night, with gay marriage referenda winning in Maine and Maryland and legal weed passing in Colorado and Washington State.  I will not be absurd enough to imply that these issues will find popular majority support in deep red states like my old Kentucky home.  But I do believe that both issues are soon reaching their national tipping point if they haven’t already.  — The RP

UPDATED:  Looks like marriage equality passed in Washington State as well, and a gay marriage ban was defeated in Minnesota.

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The winner of the RP’s First Quadrennial Electoral College Contest has to await Florida, and perhaps some Congressional races. According to the official rules, to calculate the winners, “I will use the vote tallies that are listed in the print edition of Thursday morning, November 8 New York Times. While these tallies will undoubtedly be incomplete for many races, and winners will not be declared in several campaigns, whoever is leading as of the Thursday morning tally will be the winner for the purposes of determine our champion.”

To check out the entries, click here.

To see how our contributors’ predictions fared, click here. — The RP