Friday Open Thread [11.9.12]

The last time the Republican Party won a Presidential election without somebody named Nixon or Bush on the ticket was 1928. It is likely that Hillary Clinton will win the Presidency in 2016 and extend that streak to at least 2020, or 92 years.

Election Day, Tuesday, November 6, 2012 was Delaware Liberal’s busiest day in its history. We got 15,339 page views, topping the previous record set on the Thursday after the 2010 primary when the nation decided to visit Delaware Liberal to learn about the wonderous Christine O’Donnell. And we are one or two months away from our 5 millionth visit.

Jonathan Chait:

“Republicans greeted Barack Obama’s presidency with a calculated wave of total opposition. They would not cut a deal on health care or on the federal budget, each time accepting the risk of total defeat rather than settle for half-measures, like giving Democrats some kind of token health care reform or small tax increase.”

“The gamble was that by denying Obama any support, they would render his presidency wholly partisan at best, and a dysfunctional failure at worst. They would increase their own chances of denying him a second term, and that their return to power would allow them to claim a full and absolute break with the past. They shoved all their chips onto tonight’s election. When the networks called it at 11:15 pm, the totality of the right’s failure was clear. And because they bid up the stakes as high as they could, their loss was unusually devastating.”

Ben Smith and Zeke Miller:

“The first post-baby boomer president was returned to the White House with the widest, clearest re-election win since Ronald Reagan won 49 states in 1984, yet a smaller mandate than his own his 2008 victory. And Democrats now have, in Obama, their Reagan: A figure both historic and ideological, who can carry, if not quite fulfill, a liberal vision of activist government and soft but sometimes deadly power abroad that will define his party for a generation.”

“Obama lacks Reagan’s sweeping victory, and presides over a more deeply divided country than when he took office. But the breadth of his accomplishments have been validated by Tuesday’s vote. ObamaCare is now a firmly rooted component of the nation’s social compact. Americans appear to have accepted his campaign’s argument that he deserves more credit for a nascent economic recovery than blame for it’s slow pace.”

“And the vision of a conservative resurgence appears to have fallen short. The best the Republican party could muster was a Massachusetts moderate masquerading as ‘severely conservative.’ The Tea Party is a memory, an embarrassment to a party that didn’t even mention it at its national convention in Tampa. And the network that led the conservative resurgence, Fox, suffered a sort of televised meltdown as the results came in, with Karl Rove berating host Megyn Kelly for calling the election, he said, prematurely.”

Molly Ball:

“Gay marriage won in four states. Three states made marijuana legal. Democrats didn’t just keep the Senate in a tough year, they gained seats. And of course, Barack Obama won reelection. Nov. 6, 2012, forecast as the squeaker conclusion to a toss-up race, was not a landslide, but it was a ringing victory for liberals across the board.”