One of the things that makes America exceptional is the genius, common sense and level-headedness of its people. They proved their mettle once again on this Election Day.

Immediately after the election, much of the media characterized the results as an indication that the country was divided and as a vote for the status quo. For example, The Washington Post observed in a November 7 editorial, "The nation was starkly divided before, and it remains starkly divided today." George Will, in his column on the same day declared, "A nation vocally disgusted with the status quo has reinforced it by ratifying existing control of the executive branch and both halves of the legislative branch."

Those viewpoints reflected the conventional wisdom. But, as occurs frequently, the conventional wisdom was wrong -- or, at best, incomplete and inaccurate.

When we peel back the layers on the onion, drill down into the numbers, and analyze the process from outside-the-Beltway-in instead of inside-the Beltway-out, we come to very different conclusions. The citizens of this nation are not nearly as divided as one would think. The national electoral vote was not for the status quo but for quo vadis (whither goest thou).

The electorate writ large unequivocally set out a mandate for moderation, good will, compromise, and a center left-center right approach to governing this nation. Looking at the manner in which Mitt Romney's campaign for president was conducted and examining the data from a variety of perspectives explain why this is the case.

During the Republican primaries, in order to win the nomination, Gov. Romney moved to the right of his conservative opponents such as Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. He went Tea Party crazy for a time. His last concession to the extreme conservative wing of the party, however, was to pick Paul Ryan to be his running mate. After that Romney tacked back to the middle as quickly as he could.

He assiduously avoided Ryan's controversial budget plan and Medicare voucher proposal. Beginning from the first debate, in policy terms, Romney became virtually the mirror image of Obama on almost all issues both domestic and foreign. Their positions were so similar that in subsequent debates, if Obama answered a question first, the governor going second could have simply responded "me too."

This movement to the middle ground continued through candidate Romney's concession statement which was graceful, human and authentic. In that speech Romney said, "The nation as you know is at a critical point. At a time like this, we can't risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work."

Romney's words were not meant to mollify the extremist Tea Party element of the Republican Party, but to acknowledge the need to bridge differences and to bring the country together to solve problems. They were a call for more civility rather than more hostility in our political discussions and negotiations

The reason for Romney's clarion call to the middle rather than a shout out to the radical right becomes clear when you look at how the independent or moderate voters split on Election Day -- about 50/50 (54 percent for Romney, 46 percent for Obama). That's because after Romney's initial debate performance and in subsequent debates, he became an acceptable alternative to the president because he appeared mainstream, rational and reasonable and not a candidate from the conservative lunatic fringe.

Romney lost nationally by more than 3 million votes, or approximately 2.5 percent, of the almost 121 million votes cast. Although it cannot be proven, it seems highly likely, that if Romney had continued to run for president as the uber-conservative candidate who won the Republican primaries instead of as the Obama look-alike, his margin of defeat would have been considerably larger. It is not hard to imagine a defeat of the type suffered by Barry Goldwater in 1964, George McGovern in 1972, and Jimmy Carter in 1980.

So much for the divide -- what we saw in the vote nationally was citizens united in their search for equanimity and balance in the manner in which they cast their ballots. We saw the same thing in some state contests where voters split their tickets to give Romney a considerable victory in the presidential race over Obama but the edge by a handy margin to the moderate Democrat in the senatorial race. Consider the following (rounded up or down to nearest whole percent):

• Indiana: Obama 44%. Donnelly 50%.
• Missouri: Obama 44%. McCaskill 55%.
• North Dakota: Obama 39%. Heitkamp 50%.
• Montana: Obama 42%. Tester 49%.
• West Virginia: Obama 36%. Manchin 61%.

This ticket splitting is evidence of what we would call the strength and power of the moderate center. This discriminating voting and ticket splitting also occurred in states such as Florida, New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania where Obama won but the Democrat for Senate ran ahead of the president in terms of the victory margin.

We would be remiss if we did not comment on the special cases of the Senate races in Indiana and Missouri, where legitimate rape occurred. That rape was the one in which the two Republican candidate opened their mouths, inserted their feet, or some other portions of their anatomies, swallowed hard, spoke profanely; and, in doing so managed to snatch smashing defeats from the jaws of certain victories. God works in mysterious ways -- doesn't She?

As for this being about the status quo, forget about it. Status quo means things stay the same. In this election, the Democrats gained a net of two seats in the Senate and it appears a net of seven seats in the House. The number of female senators went to 20 -- an all-time high. Hispanics turned out and cast their ballots for Democrats in record numbers.

As for the game of campaign money ball, time and again small money and smart money trumped big money. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce spent $24 million in 15 senate races but only backed the winner in two. In spite of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the various races, according to the Wall Street Journal the Super PACs' impact appears to have been limited. Here's some evidence to support that opinion.

The two Super PACs that Karl Rove is affiliated with, American Crossroads (Crossroad) and Crossroads GPS (GPS), spent $170 million this election. Crossroads backed winners with just over 1 percent of the money it expended. GPS spent 13 percent of its dollars for winners. It is reported that the billionaire Koch Brothers spent $23 million on a "slew of races" but only supported three winners. Last but definitely not least, there's billionaire casino magnate, Sheldon Adelson. Adelson spent $53 million this election cycle beginning with the Republican presidential primaries. On Election Day, only one Adelson-backed candidate (Dean Heller, R-NV) won.

It has been widely and correctly reported that President Obama enjoyed considerable margins with African American, Hispanic, youth and women voters. His performance with the moderate and independent voters has not been stressed or analyzed enough, however. The president needed to get the right level of support from these voters in order to carry the swing states and win the election. He did. We now move forward.

In conclusion, there was a mandate this Election Day. It was a mandate for the middle road and the middle class. It was a mandate for moderation and compromise. It was a mandate for the power of the average citizens' voice in shaping America's future. It was a mandate for exceptionalism over extremism.

To get regular updates on what Ed, George and Frank are writing and reading, subscribe to their newsletter by going to the following link: http://bit.ly/pivotsignup

Michael Barone, DC Examiner
Barack Obama attended more than 200 fundraisers for his presidential campaign, but he refrained from raising money for congressional Democrats.That proved to be a wise move for him, as were his strategists' decisions to run heavy ad campaigns against Mitt Romney and to build an even more effective turnout machine in target states.But it proved to be less than helpful to his party. Democrats did gain two Senate seats thanks to clueless Republican candidates and Republicans' failure to produce better turnout.But Democrats got beaten badly in races for the U.S. House and state...

E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
DENVER -- Human nature and politics being what they are, Republicans will underestimate the trouble they're in, and Democrats will be eager to overestimate the strength of their post-2012 position.Begin with the GOP: As Republicans dig out from a defeat that their poll-deniers said was impossible, they need to acknowledge many large failures.Their attempts to demonize President Obama and undercut him by obstructing his agenda didn't work. Their assumption that the conservative side would vote in larger numbers than Democrats was wrong. The tea party was less the wave of the future...

Keith Koffler, White House Dossier
1. A failure to BE a conservative.Every time Republicans nominate a candidate who doesn’t strongly back conservative ideals – George H.W. Bush in 1992, Bob Dole in 1996, and John McCain in 2008 – they lose. And every time a moderate candidate loses, everyone calls for Republicans to throw the “crazy conservatives” out of the Party and turn everyone into moderates.Go Figyah.

Thomas Sowell, Investor's Business Daily
Some media pundits see in the growing proportion of non-white groups in the population a growing opposition to the Republican Party that will sooner or later make it virtually impossible for Republicans to win presidential elections or even to control either house of Congress. But is demography destiny?Conventional wisdom in the Republican establishment is that what the GOP needs to do, in order to win black votes or Hispanic votes, is to craft policies specifically targeting these groups. In other words, Republicans need to become more like Democrats.Whether in a racial context or in other...

Ross Douthat, New York Times
THE Republican Party has lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. It just failed to unseat a president presiding over one of the longest stretches of mass unemployment since the Great Depression. In a year when the Senate map offered them numerous opportunities, the Republicans managed to lose two seats instead. Ross Douthat The columnist's blog on politics and culture. In part, these failures can be attributed to the country’s changing demographics. Reliable Republican constituencies — whites, married...

Ryan Lizza, The New Yorker
When historians look back on Mitt Romney’s bid for the Presidency, one trend will be clear: no Republican candidate ever ran a similar campaign again. For four decades, from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan through the two Bush Presidencies, the Republican Party won the White House by amassing large margins among white voters. Nixon summoned the silent majority. Reagan cemented this bloc of voters, many of whom were former Democrats. Both Bushes won the Presidency by relying on broad support from Reagan Democrats. In that time, Republicans transformed the South from solidly Democratic...

President Obama's re-election was never much in doubt, except perhaps briefly when he took a plunge after the first debate and we didn't know where the bottom was. But by the end of the campaign, Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium was giving Obama a better than 99 percent chance of winning. Nate Silver of the New York Times, more cautious, put the odds yesterday at about 90-10 in favor of Obama.

Those who point to the popular vote as evidence of a very tight contest, as much of the media did before the election, should consider two things: First, that is not the way the game is played here (unfortunately).

If the popular vote determined the presidency, the Obama team would have put more resources into big states like California and New York to ensure that Obama would win the popular vote by a wider margin." Instead, the resources went into swing states, in order to ensure a victory in the electoral vote.

Second, the country is nowhere near as closely divided as the popular vote indicates. That's because non-voters, who were about 43 percent of the electorate in 2008, favor Obama by a margin of about 2.5 to one.

Indeed, the resources and political power that Republicans mobilized to deny millions of Americans their right to vote, and to suppress voter turnout, raise serious questions about their legitimacy as a political party. A legitimate political party does not rely on preventing citizens from voting, in order to prevail at the polls, any more than a legitimate government relies on repressing freedom of speech or assembly in order to remain in power.

How did Obama win? In this election, as in almost every presidential election for decades the biggest block of swing voters has been white working-class voters (however defined, e.g. without college education). No Democratic candidate has won a majority of white voters for decades, since the Republicans adopted their "southern strategy" in the wake of historic civil rights legislation, and became the "White People's Party." (In fact, Obama did better among white voters in 2008 than John Kerry did in 2004; his race was not a handicap because most voters who wouldn't vote for an African American don't vote for Democrats.) But in this contest he had to win enough of the white working-class voters in battleground states to win the election, while winning about 95 percent of African American voters and a large majority of Latino voters.

This he did primarily by making a populist appeal to working-class voters, more populist than any major party presidential nominee in decades. In his last debate, which was supposedly about foreign policy, he repeatedly referred to Romney as someone who wants "to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules" as everyone else. Throughout the campaign, his team attacked Romney for being a rich, unscrupulous politician who didn't care about working people. Of course it helped that Romney fit the stereotype -- a rich corporate raider, a private equity fund C.E.O who said he "like[s] being able to fire people," and paid less of his income in taxes than millions of working Americans. His infamous remark dismissing 47 percent of Americans as moochers -- "my job is not to worry about those people," was a gift from God, and became one of the Obama campaign's most effective TV ads.

But for those who have followed Obama's political career, his re-election was always extremely likely -- and indeed it would hardly have been in jeopardy if he had actually debated in the first debate. We knew that he would be as populist as he needed to be in order to win. Even with 23 million still unemployed or under-employed (as Romney repeated endlessly), it's not that hard to convince a lot of working-class voters that Romney and his party don't have their interests at heart, if you are willing to make the kind of economic populist appeal that Obama ultimately made. The downside risk, for a candidate, is the potential loss of rich campaign contributors and media; but Obama was willing to take these risks in order to win. This was a historic difference from previous presidential campaigns; Democratic candidates such as Michael Dukakis and Al Gore flirted briefly with economic populist appeals, but backed off in the face of media pressure.

The media are a huge factor in most elections here, and outside of Fox News and the right-wing press, most of the major news outlets were more sympathetic to Obama than to Romney. However they still helped Romney quite a bit, especially with swing voters, with bad reporting on key economic issues. Most Americans didn't know that the federal stimulus had created an estimated three million jobs; in fact they didn't even distinguish the stimulus from the unpopular federal bank bailout. They didn't understand the benefits that they would derive from Obama's health care legislation. They didn't know that they had their taxes cut under Obama. And millions believed the hype that federal deficit spending and the U.S. public debt were major problems (for the record, the U.S. currently pays less than one percent of GDP in net interest annually on the federal debt, less than it has paid during the past 60 years).

The confusion on economic issues was probably the most important influence on swing voters who supported Romney against their own economic interests, thinking that the economy might improve if he were elected.

For this and other misunderstandings we can thank the major media, although we should also include the public relations blunders made by the Obama team. Perhaps the biggest strategic error was President Obama's refusal to go after Romney's proposal to cut Social Security, thereby losing the majority of senior citizens' votes (a big vote in swing states like Virginia and Florida), which he could potentially have won by defending America's most popular anti-poverty program.

Obama's silence on Social Security is a bad omen for the future, where political, media, and business leaders will be pressing for a "grand bargain" on budget issues that will screw the vast majority of Americans. It will take a lot of grassroots pressure to prevent the worst outcomes. Ditto to get us out of Afghanistan and to prevent another disastrous war, this time with Iran; Obama's foreign policy has been mostly atrocious and the never-ending "war on terror" continues to expand, while most Americans' living standards have been declining. It's going to be an uphill fight for progress, but -- it could have been a lot worse.

This week, Obama won, Romney lost, rape turned out to be 2012's most surprising campaign issue, and Karl Rove refused to believe the math -- while his not-so-super Super PAC blamed its misspent $300 million on "very, very weak candidates." But it wasn't the GOP's candidates that were to blame; it was the party's narrow and sclerotic message. Romney actually attracted the vote of his party's usual coalition. But that's not enough anymore. The numbers aren't there, and are trending away from Republicans. "It's not a traditional America anymore," lamented Bill O'Reilly. "The white establishment is now a minority" -- replaced in his telling by black and brown people "who want stuff." Indeed they do; stuff like immigration reform, affordable health care, reproductive rights, and economic justice. For a two-party system to be healthy, both parties need to be in good shape. Right now the Republican Party is badly in need of a soul transplant.

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WASHINGTON -- On a conference call with House Republicans a day after the party's electoral battering last week, Speaker John A. Boehner dished out some bitter medicine, and for the first time in the 112th Congress, most members took their dose.

Winner-take-all American elections produce stark choices for voters and activists. You can have plenty of disagreements with a candidate on policies and still support them passionately because the alternative is so stunningly bad. The closer the election gets, the more the differences with your favorite candidate tend to get muted, because election choices are not about nuance.

Once the election is over, though, the policy debates within a political party come back to center stage. The debates we are beginning to engage in within the Democratic party right now will be partly around ideology, of course, as populist progressives and more Wall Street-oriented Third Way Democrats duke it out. But the debates will also play out on another level as our party's optimists and pessimists begin engaging each other in earnest. Being optimistic or pessimistic isn't just about people's respective moods, or about making predictions. It has serious policy implications as well.

The optimists are the official party line. The Obama campaign message, Bill Clinton in his famous Democratic convention speech, and party spokespeople have been sending the message that in spite of the tough times we've had, things are going to get steadily better, that the foundation has been set for real prosperity. And I know from my conversations with administration economic policy people that they really believe it. One senior White House NEC official told me in the weeks before the election that his biggest political nightmare was Romney getting elected and then getting credit for the recovery that is soon arriving.

I sure do hope these optimists are right, it would be such a great thing to see. But there is another group of economic policy people that I know who are a lot less sanguine. They believe that the housing bubble that led to the financial collapse of 2008, the enormous and still mostly unchecked power of the biggest banks to distort and manipulate markets, and the complete mismanagement of economic policy in the Bush years have created long term structural damage different and far deeper than in past recessions. They fear that Europe is still a ticking time bomb, and that the problem of housing debt caused by the bubble's collapse is still a major drag on our economy. They believe that we have just gone through the first five years of a lost decade comparable to the Japan lost decade of the '90s (which Japan's economy still hasn't recovered from). And they worry that the austerity economics slowing Europe's economy to a crawl, the same policies the politicians here seem determined to head toward, will only make things worst.

The policy implications of this are huge. If you are an optimist, your tendency is to believe that no big new initiatives are needed, that we are on the right course and mostly need to avoid doing anything to screw things up. That doesn't mean there still aren't some tweaks needed here or there, some modest new policy innovations you want to tinker with, but it makes you far more reluctant to be bold or invest a lot of political capital in big new ideas. On the other hand, if you fear that we are smack in the middle of a lost decade, that the structural damage from the bubble and collapse are too deep for this to be just a little bit deeper recession than usual, you are more likely to push for major new ideas.

I am normally a more optimistic person, but in this case I tend to be more in the pessimists' camp. Partly that's because I view the world through the lens of the working class neighborhood I grew up in, and the lower income folks I cut my teeth organizing for when I was getting started in politics. The working middle class has been through hell the last five years, and outside of my friends in the auto industry, they have yet to see a lot of the benefits of what recovery we have been seeing. I firmly believe in bottom-up economics, that the engine of a strong economy is a growing and prosperous middle class, and I have yet to see that middle class make great gains. A side note here from the exit polls that I think is telling: 37 percent of Americans, overwhelmingly from the middle class, think inflation is the number one economic problem today. This is in spite of the fact that the overall inflation numbers have stayed low the last four years. The reason? Working and middle class folks have had wages that are flat or worse in recent years, while the prices that matter the most for them -- gasoline, groceries, health care, college tuition -- have continued to skyrocket. That's what they call middle class squeeze, and it's why Mitt Romney came close in this election despite having an economic platform and a you're-on-your-own values system that middle class voters thought was awful.

If the middle class engine isn't purring, the economic road to recovery will be bumpy at best. We need to do some big things to rebuild this economy for the long term. Policy makers need to take a look at bigger, bolder ideas like this Shared Prosperity plan. And knowing that the Republican house won't be likely to go along with things like that, the president needs to (a) not agree to job-killing Republican austerity demands, and (b) be prepared to take bigger and bolder executive action. Example include signing executive orders on procurement and purchasing that force employers doing business with the federal government to pay better wages and benefits, and aggressively pushing bankers and Fannie/Freddie on mortgage writedowns.

Here's the other thing the president needs to think about: counting, as he has in the past, on the rosier economic scenario to come true has dangerous political implications. An economic slowdown and low growth rate over the next couple of years, whether because of Europe or anything else, is political danger at it's highest level after a campaign of emphasizing that everything was on the right track and moving forward. If you don't take any big steps and/or agree to the austerity the Republicans are pushing, you are making a very dangerous bet: the 2010 election might look good in comparison.

I sincerely hope my friends in the White House are right about the economy finally being on the right track. It would be a joy to see the country getting moving again. But the president needs to not assume the best, not be complacent in case that scenario turns bad. Revving up our middle class engine is long overdue.

Saying no has been the modus operandi of the 112th Congress. For too many of our elected representatives, it has been either my way or no highway. Progress for the American economy and Americans has been compromised because there have been few attempts at compromise.

Now that the country has a newly elected Congress, we hope those congresspersons and senators who will take part in the lame duck session and who will take office after the first of the year will realize that they are in Washington, DC to do the people's business. They are there to solve problems and craft pragmatic legislation rather than to impose their own personal and partisan agendas and ideologies. They are there to negotiate not to negate.

We don't expect the members of Congress to be able to move directly from saying no to Getting to Yes (the title of Roger Fisher and William Ury's classic book on negotiations). But, perhaps they can start by getting to maybe.

Getting to maybe establishes a framework for meaningful discourse and dialogue and the consideration of a range of acceptable alternatives, options and trade-offs. From there, it should eventually be possible to get to yes and by doing so to restore citizen respect for this badly tarnished and increasingly reviled institution.

We are not delusional or naive enough to expect that getting to maybe will be an easy task. We recognize that over the past few years, compromise in Congress has become an oxymoron and bipartisanship a dirty word.

On the other hand, we are not skeptical or jaded enough, to think that getting to maybe is impossible. That's because getting there is a necessity for continuing our democratic system of governance and our country. Put us in the camp of former defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who, speaking at an event in September sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and other organizations said, "My hope is following the presidential elections whatever adults remain in the two political parties will make the compromises necessary to put this country back in order."

It takes courage to compromise -- especially when you are reaching across party lines and defying conventional party wisdom. We saw that courage demonstrated by the five senators: Tom Coburn, (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Kent Conrad (D-ND) on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform who voted for approval of the Commission's full report.

Unfortunately, this type of compromise is becoming more and more unusual. That's because, as E.J. Dionne pointed out in a recent column, "Democrats, a more moderate and diverse party, believe in compromise far more than Republicans do." Dionne explains this is true for both the Democratic Party faithful and their candidates for office and indicates that the tea party influence has changed the composition of the Republican Party and their candidates to make them extremely more conservative and unwilling to compromise.

Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, two of the foremost scholars on the operations of Congress, make a similar but much more strongly expressed point in their book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism published earlier this year. In it, they write, "Today's Republican Party... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government.'

This is a harsh assessment and possibly overstates the case. We do know unequivocally, however, that the Republicans and Democrats are at very different points on the compromise continuum. The majority of Democrats tend to be in the middle, malleable and movable while the majority of the Republicans are far right, intractable and intransigent.

If that's the situation, how do we begin getting to maybe? We recommend the following as starting points:

1. 1. Change the mindset
   


2. 2. Change the rules
   


3. 3. Change the methods

Change the Mindset: Today many legislators believe aligning themselves with those from the other party on an issue is an act of cowardice and surrender. As long as this attitude prevails and leaders punish those who cross-over, the journey to maybe cannot start. We need to replace it with the understanding that compromise is an act or courage and success. It is a necessary pre-condition for achieving shared solutions not a capitulation or sacrificing of principles. The subtitle of Fisher and Ury's book Getting to Yes is "Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In." That says it perfectly. Negotiating to reach a common ground is getting things done not giving in.

Change the Rules: Steve Kroft did a 60 Minutessegment titled "The Broken Senate" on the Sunday before Election Day. During that segment, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pointed out that when Lyndon Johnson was leader of the Senate he had to try to override one filibuster compared to 248 for Reid. The filibuster allows the minority to thwart the will of the majority because it requires 60 votes to get a piece of legislation passed. Scholars Mann and Ornstein place it at the top of the list for reform in a chapter they devote to "Reforming U.S. Political Institutions" in their book. The nonpartisan group No Labels also has the filibuster near the top of its 12 proposals to Make Congress Work. We are not in complete agreement with the No Label proposals nor with all of the Mann/Ornstein recommendations. We are in absolute agreement, however, with the need to change the rules and to make Congress work.

Change the Methods: One of the main reasons that Congress doesn't work is that is has become so balkanized. There is virtually no effort at coming together to work together. It didn't used to be that way. As Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said in the Sixty Minutes segment when Bob Dole was majority leader, "He would say go to my office at 8:30 in the morning and work it out. He was so intent on making sure that we came up with a solution to the issue that was before the Senate."

In contrast, today the Senate and House members often convene in private and purely intraparty meetings and sessions where the emphasis is on competition not collaboration. One such gathering is Democratic caucus lunches. A lot of which, according to former Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) are about, "OK, we're a team. We gotta stick together. We got to beat the daylights out of the other side. We can't afford straying from the team. If you do, that doesn't help us."

These one-sided meetings in which a group develops and hardens its own positions without input or participation from the other are counterproductive and conflict-producing. They lead to what Fisher and Ury call "positional bargaining" in which each side opens with a position and then the two positional combatants struggle mightily and frequently futilely trying to reach a common agreement.

To correct this, Fisher and Ury recommend "principled negotiation" as opposed to positional bargaining. The four principles of this approach are: (1) separate the people from the problem; (2) focus on interests not positions; (3) generate a variety of options before settling on an agreement; and (4) insist that the agreement be based on objective criteria.

As we stated, changing the mindset, changing the rules and changing the methods are starting points for getting to maybe. There are other governance areas such as fair districting, open primaries and expanded voter participation that need to be addressed in order to get to yes. We discuss them in our Huffington Post blog "Overcoming Electoral Rigor Mortis" that we posted after the elections of 2010.

Our focus here, however, is on getting started on getting to maybe. The good news is that what is required is not costly in financial terms. It is elected men and women of good will with the courage to compromise. The bad news is that getting started requires true leadership (both official and unofficial).

When Senator Coburn, was asked why it has been so difficult to compromise, during the Sixty Minutes interview, he responded, "It's leadership. It's pure leadership. When the goal is always to win the next election, rather than to put the country on the right course, whether it's a Republican leading it or the -- a Democrat leading it, the Senate is not going to work."

If the Senate doesn't work and the Congress doesn't work, the country doesn't work. With this election, we will see if we now have courageous leaders who realize this and are prepared to begin the journey to Maybe and to compromise by putting country first rather than party first. The future of America and the American dream depends on their doing so.

To get regular updates on what Ed, George and Frank are writing and reading, subscribe to their newsletter by going to the following link: http://bit.ly/pivotsignup.

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won't. You can't. It's our country, too.President Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can only be seen as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn't even close. In a year...

Yes, election night was a heck of a party and it's great that the really bad guys lost. Karl Rove and his reactionary ilk were defeated by a new American majority that is younger, more tolerant, rainbow colored and multilingual and one in which women now trump the depressing ignorance of so many older white men. But morning in America already feels too much like a hangover. The house is still a wreck, the family is dysfunctional and there are enormous bills to pay that are not about to go away.

All of us suddenly sobered folks, who voted for Barack Obama because the alternative was so horridly wrong, have got to accept the moral implications of that choice. We won but at what cost? Fool me once, shame on Obama, but fool me twice and I'm the one responsible. That goes for his promises to right the economy by leveling the playing field as well as to end what Obama termed in his victory speech "a decade of war."

It is now our fingers on the video game buttons that order the drones to kill innocent civilians, and we bear responsibility if the president maintains the Guantanamo gulag and continues to vilify Bradley Manning and Julian Assange for confronting America with its war crimes. Will he make good on his promise to hold the line on the incessant demands of the congressional defense contractor caucus or will he find yet another "good war"?

What about our expectation that Obama will be more vigilant than his vulture capitalist opponent in reining in the greed of the Wall Street crowd that has caused so much economic turmoil? The good news is that Obama, and his party, are far less beholden to the titans of the financial industry than they were the first time around. His own funding from top Wall Street firms that favored him in 2008 was way down, and across the country voters rejected the deregulation and lower tax on high roller income that the finance industry thought it was buying for its more than $400 million in campaign contributions.

"Wall Street Took a Beating at the Polls," ran the headline in The Wall Street Journal. Referring to what he bemoaned as "Tuesday's multiple disappointments," columnist David Weidner added, "not the least of which is the defeat of Mitt Romney, a former private-equity executive who promised to cut or at least review financial regulation while offering more tax breaks for investors. Mr. Romney was perhaps the best hope for Wall Street this fall. He was one of their own, so tantalizingly close to the biggest trading floor of all."

Parse the cynicism of that sentence, with its image of representative democracy as a frantic for-profit trading pit and you get what crony capitalism is all about. They thought the fix was in on bribing a compliant Congress and instead the two biggest recipients of Wall Street largess went down to defeat. In Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, the single most knowledgeable and effective exponent of consumer protection from financial industry scams, soundly beat Sen. Scott Brown, a champion of financial deregulation. The second main Wall Street target, Sherrod Brown, the Democratic senator from Ohio who sponsored legislation that would break up the too big to fail banks, also won decisively, defeating banker-backed Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel.

Obama didn't go as far as the Ohio senator and Harvard law professor Warren wanted but even the much more timid steps toward financial industry accountability that the president endorsed met fierce resistance from members of the Wall Street crowd. Hopefully he will finally get the message that their unfettered greed is the problem and hardly the solution. That's what it took for Franklin Roosevelt to become the true champion of the commonweal in his second term and it could salvage the historic legacy of this president as well.

Will the president now replace Timothy Geithner, the big bank toady, with a Treasury secretary that Elizabeth Warren, the senator for the 99 percent, can enthusiastically support? How about Sheila Bair for that post? The former chair of the FDIC has been a highly skilled guardian of the public interest with the knowledge base and social conscience required to stand up to the banking lobby and its allies in the Federal Reserve.

The 2012 election represents a profound mandate for change because it was a startling manifestation of the power as well as the presence of the long neglected "other" that is the face of the new America. That is the America that continued to stick with Obama, despite reservations over his actual governance, because the alternative was reactionary in the fullest sense of that word. Theirs is an idealistic trust -- indispensable to the survival of our republic -- that the president must not be permitted to now squander.

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- So much for voter suppression. So much for the enthusiasm gap. So much for the idea that smug, self-appointed arbiters of what is genuinely "American" were going to "take back" the country, as if it had somehow been stolen.On Tuesday, millions of voters sent a resounding message to the take-it-back crowd: You won't. You can't. It's our country, too.President Obama and the Democratic Party scored what can only be seen as a comprehensive victory. Obama won the popular vote convincingly, and the electoral vote wasn't even close. In a year...

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post
They lose and immediately the chorus begins. Republicans must change or die. A rump party of white America, it must adapt to evolving demographics or forever be the minority.The only part of this that is even partially true regards Hispanics. They should be a natural Republican constituency: striving immigrant community, religious, Catholic, family-oriented and socially conservative (on abortion, for example).

They can't possibly win on Election Day, but third-party candidates definitely could matter in the outcome of Ohio's already close presidential election.

Voters in Ohio will find five candidates on the ballot other than President Obama and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. If Obama and Romney are tied, as some recent polls have shown, even 1% of votes cast in this battleground state for a third candidate could mean the difference in winning Ohio.

WASHINGTON -- Once again, Florida and its problems at the polls are at the center of an election.

Early voting is supposed to make it easier for people to carry out their constitutional right. Tuesdays are notoriously inconvenient to take off work, so many states have given voters the option of turning out on weekends or other weekdays in the run-up to Election Day.

But in Florida this year, it has been a nightmare for voters, who have faced record wait times, long lines in the sun and a Republican governor, Rick Scott, who has refused to budge and extend early voting hours.

"People are getting out to vote. That's what's very good," said Scott.

People are getting out to vote -- but many of them are having to wait in line for three or four hours to do so. One contributor to DailyKos claimed it took 9 hours to vote. In Miami-Dade on Saturday, people who had gotten in line by 7:00 p.m. were allowed to vote; the last person wasn't checked in until 1 a.m., meaning it took some individuals six hours to cast a ballot.

Miami-Dade attempted to deal with the problem on Sunday by allowing voters to cast absentee ballots in person between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. However, after just two hours, the Miami-Dade elections department shut down the location after too many people showed up. People outside the locked doors were reportedly screaming, "We want to vote!"

And if getting turned away from the polls weren't enough of an indignity, some of those 180 people ended up getting their cars towed from the parking lot across the street, according to a Miami Herald reporter.

On Twitter, former Republican governor Charlie Crist -- who is now an independent -- responded to news of the office's closing, writing on Twitter, "Let the people vote!"

“We had the best of intentions to provide this service today,” said department spokeswoman Christina White. “We just can’t accommodate it to the degree that we would like to.”

About 30 minutes later, a Miami Herald reporter tweeted that the Miami-Dade location was reopening its doors.

Palm Beach, Pinellas, Orange, Leon and Hillsborough Counties also opened up in-person absentee voting on Sunday.

President Barack Obama's campaign and some of its supporters were attempting to keep people's spirits up -- and discourage them from abandoning the lines -- by bringing in food, water and even local musicians and DJs as entertainment.

North Miami Mayor Andre Pierre brought 400 slices of pizza to voters in line at 10:30 p.m. last night at the city's public library, according to an Obama official.

A major reason there are so many problems at the polls is that last year, Florida's GOP-controlled legislature shortened the number of early voting days from 14 to eight, meaning all early voters are trying to cast their ballots in a shorter window. Previously, Floridians were allowed to vote on the Sunday before Election Day -- a day that typically had high traffic.

Scott has refused to extend early voting hours, essentially arguing that there is no problem, despite calls from Democrats, independent groups and even a Republican elections supervisor. He is arguing that he can extend early voting hours only when there is a true emergency -- like a natural disaster -- that warrants it.

"I'm focused on making sure that we have fair, honest elections," said Scott. "One thing to know, these early voting days and on Election Day, if you're there by the time the polls close, you get to vote."

Scott has some of the lowest approval ratings of any governor in the nation. In recent Quinnipiac poll, just 39 percent of Floridians said they approved of the job he is doing. Scott, unlike many other GOP governors, has not hit the campaign trail much on behalf of Mitt Romney.

As Florida Democrats have pointed out, the state's previous two Republican governors -- Jeb Bush and Crist -- both extended the hours. A spokesman for Bush didn't return a request for comment.

A judge extended the hours in Orange County after the state Democratic Party sued for more time. The location was closed for several hours on Saturday when everyone was evacuated due to a suspicious package.

Democrats are traditionally more likely to vote early, which is why many in the party have ascribed political motives to Scott's restriction of the process. According to a report in the Miami Herald on Saturday, Democrats were leading Republicans "by about 187,000 early in-person ballots cast" as of that morning.

Florida is expected to be tight in this election. According to HuffPost Pollster's average of polls in the race, Romney is now leading Obama in the state by less than one percentage point.

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

GREEN BAY, Wis. — It's football Sunday, so why not a quick stop outside the home of the Green Bay Packers before a hectic day of campaigning for Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan?

The Wisconsin congressman and his family joined up with a tailgating party across the street from Lambeau Field. Two of running mate Mitt Romney's five sons, Josh and Matt, were there along with four of Romney's grandchildren.

Ryan was wearing yellow and green striped ties and a Packers jacket. He didn't make formal remarks during the 10-minute visit and didn't go inside the stadium, where the Packers were taking on the Arizona Cardinals in the afternoon.

Ryan is heading to Ohio, Minnesota and Colorado for campaign rallies.

Last month Ryan dropped in on practice at the Cleveland Browns facility.

* Democrats say she would keep leader job if she chooses

* Pelosi says "no way on Earth" Romney will win

By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Normally outspoken Nancy Pelosi is mum about her future.

She won't say if she will step aside as Democratic leader of the U.S. House of Representatives if her party fails, as expected, to win back the chamber from Republicans in Tuesday's elections.

Pelosi recently fanned speculation about her future by scheduling House Democratic leadership elections later than many anticipated, after the Nov. 22 Thanksgiving Day holiday, rather than at the outset of the lame-duck session of the House that begins a week after the Nov. 6 election.

Several of her colleagues say Pelosi would retain her leadership job if she does choose to run.

Pelosi said in an interview with Reuters that she decided to have leadership elections later to give newly elected members more time to get acquainted before deciding on leaders and to let members focus on the election without distraction.

"There's feeling she wants to give herself more time to think about what she will do," one party aide said.

Pelosi said she is too busy to "waste a moment or an once of energy" on the hypothetical question.

"Right now, our focus is on one thing - winning," Pelosi said in a telephone interview between campaign events.

Besides she said, "Do you ask (Republican presidential nominee) Mitt Romney what he will do if he loses? ... There is no way on Earth that he's going to win."

Pelosi was speaker of the House - the first and only woman to hold the post - from 2007 until January 2011, when Republican John A. Boehner took over after a Republican sweep in the 2010 congressional elections.

"Organize, don't agonize. That's my motto," said Pelosi, 72, who was first elected to Congress from San Francisco 25 years ago.

In October, Pelosi had 65 fundraising and campaign events in eight states and the District of Columbia, her office said.

Pelosi dismisses predictions by most analysts that Democrats will fall far short of picking up the needed 25 seats to take the 435-member House.

"I've never been to one to go along with the experts," she said. "There are a lot of close races that can go either way."

Interviews with a dozen House Democrats found all saying it's unclear what Pelosi will do about the leadership job.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't know. I doubt she's given it much thought," said Democratic Representative Gerald Connolly. "She's thinking about the here and now."

But all agreed that if Pelosi decides to run again for House Democratic leader, she would get the job.

"We get our inspiration from her aspiration to accomplish great things," said Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings.

Democratic Representative George Miller said: "I don't know what she'll do. It's her decision. But I think it's unlikely she leaves. She is a warhorse."

"She gives all the signs that she intends to run again for leader," said one Democratic aide who asked not to be named. "She's working hard for members. She's out there raising money. She's totally engaged."

Critics say Pelosi should have followed the example of former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert, who left leadership after his party lost the chamber in 2006.

A number of moderate Democrats had hoped Pelosi, a leading liberal, would do that after the 2010 election. But after days of private talks, she announced she would run and won easily.

Pelosi said her primary motivation - as it was when she first ran for Congress in 1987 - is to help children living in poverty, now one in five.

In 2010, Republicans made Pelosi the face of an unpopular Congress with more than $65 million in attack ads. In picking up 63 House seats to take the House, they blamed her for Obama's controversial U.S. healthcare overhaul.

Regardless how Tuesday's election turns out, Pelosi seems certain to remain in Congress for at least two more years. Having won a 13th term in 2010 with 80 percent of the vote, she's favored to easily capture a 14th on Tuesday.

Following on from looking at who will be running for the Democrats in four years time, these are some of the likely Republican contenders in the event of a Romney loss. If he does lose this year, it is highly improbable that he'll run again. Taking into account his previous attempt for the nomination, he has been in the process of running for president for seven years. After being rejected by his party and then by the nation, he might start forming the idea that Americans might not want him in the White House.

In the wake of a Republican defeat, it will leave the party with questions over how it once again makes itself an attractive proposition to American voters. Over the past four years, it has moved to the right. Will it move further onwards or return to the centre to capture those who are mistrustful of Obama's spending plans yet dissuaded by the party's rhetoric on social issues?

If it is to go for the centre, then its image of being a party for old white men will have to change. Changing population demographics mean that the party will have to field candidates that appeal to non-caucasian groups. Fortunately for them, there is a new generation of Republicans who fit this description.

Marco Rubio

The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio has what very few Republican candidates have; an authentic connection to the Hispanic population. Whilst George W. Bush and Mitt Romney have recorded campaign ads in Spanish, Rubio is from Spanish-speaking stock as well as being an immigrant success story. His experiences as a second generation Cuban-American are something that he will resonate with many of the new voters in the south. He was one of the people vetted for Romney's running mate before the call went for Ryan.

Why he will run

Rubio has been a popular senator of Florida and given the importance of the state in the electoral college, he has a firm base upon which to make a run for president. He is different from other Republican candidates given his heritage and showing that you can be born to immigrant parents and still be a Republican.

Why he won't run

The only thing stopping a Rubio run in 2016 is a Romney win this year. It is highly likely that he will keep his place in the Senate in 2014. Such is the esteem in which he is held within the party that he was the person chosen to introduce Mitt Romney at the Republican National Convention. Only something scandalous or catastrophic can stop him in the event that Romney loses.

Bobby Jindal

Piyush 'Bobby' Jindal came within six months of not being able to run for president, his parents only arriving in the country half a year before his birth. Since then, Jindal has become a leading light in the party, another of the new generation of Republicans whose parents are immigrants. A popular governor of Louisiana, he was courted by John McCain as a potential Vice President in 2008 before he went for Sarah Palin.

Why he will run

Like Rubio, Jindal may feel that he can offer something lacking in recent Republican candidates; youth and racial diversity. He is also attractive to Republican voters due to his 100% pro-life voting record and opposition to same-sex marriage.

Why he won't run

When given the chance to make an impression on the national stage, he has failed to deliver. A planned speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention was disrupted by Jindal going back to Louisiana to assist in the preparations for Hurricaine Gustav. Then he was given the opportunity to respond to President Obama's first speech to Congress. His response, which referenced the ineffective response to Hurricaine Katrina and argued against government intervention, was savaged by both parties and their supporters. Seven years down the line and Jindal might not have enough support within the party to make a viable run.

Nikki Haley 

Like Jindal, Haley was born to Indian parents who immigrated to America, and like Jindal, she is the governor of a southern state. Her win in South Carolina was enabled by endorsements from Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. She is a member of the Tea Party and has held a consistent conservative stance on such issues as abortion, taxation and immigration.

Why she will run

Given that she gained the endorsement of both Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, it is clear that she has popular support within the party. Her membership of the Tea Party may be a help or hindrance depending on whether the economy keeps stagnating and the direction taken by the Republican Party.

Why she will not run

Although an Indian-American female Republican candidate would be a first, it doesn't necessarily mean that Haley would be a standout from the field. Her views match those of many conservative voters but she does not have enough of a national profile to have a realistic chance yet. Perhaps 2020 will be her year.

Scott Walker

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is much more of an orthodox Republican candidate. He became governor of the state two years ago and survived a recall election the following year. His politics are in tune with many Republican voters with a consistent conservative voting record on abortion, taxes and same-sex marriage.

Why he will run

Walker will feel that his voting record and political stance will make him an attractive candidate within the party. Taking on the unions in Wisconsin and triumphing will have done his chances no harm at all.

Why he won't run

Walker does not enjoy a great deal of popularity in his own state. The recall shows that he is a divisive figure within the state and his victory in that election was not by a big margin. Lacking momentum within his own state could be a problem further down the line.

Chris Christie

The charismatic governor of New Jersey ummed and ahhed about standing this year before deciding against it. His keynote speech at the Republican National Convention made quite an impression and propelled him onto the national stage. He will chair the Republican Governors Association in 2014, which is viewed as a springboard to a future presidential run. The position gives him access to a multitude of senior Republican figures and potential donors.

Why he will run

He has put everything in place for a run in 2016: a successful term as governor, which saw him taking on the unions and opposing same-sex marriage. Allied with this is his popularity within the party and his time spent as the chair of the Republican Governors Association.

Why he won't run

Other than a Romney win, the only thing that stands between Christie and a run in 2016 is the gubernatorial election next year. In the same way that it is vital for Cory Booker, lose this and all this momentum will be derailed.

Other candidates: Rand Paul, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), a candidate for the U.S. Senate, has voted at least five times against bills aimed at preventing and responding to disasters, in two cases even though a resounding majority of his own party supported the bill.

Flake is a frequent "nay" voter in general, particularly on spending bills, yet he votes with the Republican Party nearly 90 percent of the time. His office could not be reached for comment on Tuesday morning, nor could his Senate campaign.

Most recently, Flake voted against appropriations for disaster relief for the 2012 fiscal year, as did 65 other GOP House members and one Democrat, Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee. The bill was nonetheless passed by Congress and signed into law at the end of December 2011.

Also last year, Flake voted against the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2011, which passed the House with bipartisan support from 218 Republicans and 188 Democrats.

Flake opposed the 2010 version of that legislation, albeit with more colleagues on his side. The bill passed the House despite 90 "no" votes -- from 89 Republicans and then-Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). In that case, a slight majority of his fellow Republicans were with Flake: Only 85 GOP House members supported the bill.

Even during his first term in Congress, Flake was one of only three House members to vote against a bill aimed at forecasting inland flooding. The Inland Flood Forecasting and Warning System Act of 2002 passed the House with 413 "ayes" and only three "nays": Flake, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and then-Rep. Brian Kerns (R-Ind.).

And when the House in September 2005 approved supplemental emergency funds to handle damage from Hurricane Katrina, which had devastated the Gulf Coast, Flake was one of only 11 members all of them Republicans, to vote against the bill. Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Steve King (R-Iowa) and Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) were among the others to vote no.

Flake is currently running to replace retiring Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). He leads his Democratic opponent, Richard Carmona, by 1.2 percentage points, according to an estimate from HuffPost Pollster.

William Douglas, McClatchy
ERIE, Pa. "” The Republican campaign bus roared into the party headquarters parking lot in the northwestern Pennsylvania town of Erie on a chilly afternoon for a rally that had all the trappings of a close contest.Hundreds of people wearing Romney-Ryan buttons and hats, plus one man carrying a "NObama" sign, crammed inside the headquarters and cheered loudly as party officials blasted President Barack Obama. Volunteers manned telephone banks imploring people to vote. 

The 2012 presidential election campaign has been disappointing. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about this election is that were President Barack Obama white it is likely he would be on his way to a landslide victory.

President Obama inherited a disastrous mess. When he entered office the economy was shrinking at 9 percent annually due to the Bush Recession. About 800 thousand Americans were losing jobs each month. The banking system was on the verge of collapse, the housing market was a disaster, and the American car industry was dying. The country was engaged in two difficult and costly wars, both in lives and resources, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, and mastermind of the worst attack on U.S. soil, continued to plot against America and its allies.

In his inaugural speech, at the U.S. Capitol before nearly 2 million people, the president said, "On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." But, inside the Capitol, Republicans met and formulated a plan to obstruct, deny and delay the president's agenda. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would later publicly state that making President Obama a one-term president, not the economy, was the number one priority of his party.

The new president, facing fierce partisan opposition, signed into law the Recovery Act, a.k.a. the stimulus package. Although it was smaller than he originally proposed, most economists credit it with righting the stalling economy. Even Representative Paul Ryan requested stimulus money to help businesses in his district. The president also signed tough banking reform legislation to assure a similar crisis would not occur. He enacted the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that assures fair pay for women. He bailed out the American auto companies over the objections of many Republicans, including Governor Mitt Romney, who wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece that they should be allowed to go bankrupt. The auto bailout saved one million jobs, and now the industry is vibrant again.

The president's signature legislative achievement, the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) will make health care more affordable and accessible to all Americans, and protect consumers from abuses by insurance companies. For instance, no longer can insurance companies deny people health care benefits because they have a pre-existing condition. More importantly, 40 million uninsured Americans will be covered and the government will realize $1 trillion in health care savings over the next decade, according to its sponsors. .

But Republicans have used Obamacare (rhymes with Romneycare) as a major rallying cry against the president, falsely charging it is a government take over of health care, that it would restrict an individual's choices, and that it would set up death panels. While they offered no credible alternatives, they demonized the president as a socialist.

The president had promised to end the war in Iraq, and he did. But Republicans were vociferous in their criticism, saying he withdrew too early. The president promised a military build up in Afghanistan, where the war was nearly in its tenth year, and he did. The president also set a deadline of June 2014 for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from that country. But Republicans criticized the president for announcing a deadline. And just last week candidate Mitt Romney announced at the third debate that he agreed with the president's deadline after all.

The president made getting Osama bin Laden a top priority early on in his administration. Bin Laden had eluded capture for nearly a decade, and was a low priority for both President George Bush and candidate Romney. But in May 2011, U.S. forces killed the world's most heinous terrorist leader in Pakistan. The president took a huge political risk by ordering the killing, but now Republicans claim that anyone would have done the same thing.

The president has had some missteps during his first term. The U.S. economy is still sluggish and too many people remain unemployed. But the world is a different place today than it was in the early 1980's, when President Ronald Reagan revived a bad U.S. economy. Economic growth in China and India has slowed; much of Europe is still in a recession. Nonetheless, under President Obama the U.S. economy has enjoyed 31 straight months of jobs growth and unemployment is at its lowest point, 7.8 percent, since he took office.

At the Democratic Convention, President Bill Clinton said, "No president, not me, not any of my predecessors, could have repaired all of the damage he found in just four years." When one considers the animus and vitriol that has roiled the American political scene, stirred by Republicans and Tea Party loyalists, it is a wonder that the man who called for "unity of purpose" has succeeded at all.

Mr. Obama has been labeled "the food stamp president" and an "anti-colonialist" by leading Republicans. He has repeatedly been treated with unprecedented disrespect, including on the floor of the House of Representatives. His place of birth has been constantly questioned, as have his academic records. About a third of all Republicans think the president is a Muslim and not a Christian. Most recently, when General Colin Powell, a leading Republican, war hero and African American, announced his thoughtful endorsement for the president's reelection, right wing critics sniped. Former Vermont Governor John Sununu, and chief Romney surrogate, said, "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

On Saturday, the Associated Press released a poll that found, "51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey." According to AP, "Overall, the survey found that by virtue of racial prejudice, President Obama could lose 5 percentage points off his share of the popular vote in his Nov. 6 contest against Republican challenger Mitt Romney." Racial prejudice actually increased in America over the past four years with an African American in the White House, a president who has rarely raised the issue of race.

Americans should vote for the candidate who they believe will be the best president. But to use race as a factor would only reward those who have divided the nation by using fear and hatred to achieve their political agenda.