Post Election Thoughts

Here are a few "day after" thoughts on the national election results...

Republicans

• You lost the Presidential race and you need to move on. Sure, it was close in the popular vote, but you lost that and - more important - were clubbed in the electoral college. Your team has won a lot in the past (Reagan, both Bushes, Congressional majorities for the most part over the last 20 years)...but not now. Obama is the President. He is not a foreigner, a socialist, a communist or the anti-Christ. Cleanse yourself of that baggage. He is the twice elected President of the USA. Accept and move on.
• You need to re-think how you approach national races. Your strategy of trying to win by maximizing voter turnout in areas you have an advantage (rural/suburban, white, male, older) in hopes that this counterbalances turnout in the cities and among minorities and women? It failed. It might have worked in 2000 or 2004, but the nation is changing demographically. It's becoming a more ethnically diverse and accepting place. Doubling down on right wing policies that appeal to middle age white guys in the countryside ain't cutting it and won't going forward. Reinvent your party and have a shot. Don't and really risk not seeing the White House for quite a while.
• You need to legitimately work with Democrats to get things done rather than instantly go back to the "party of no" mode to spite Obama and try and set up a R win in 2016. You need to re-define your idea of compromise as something other than demanding the Democrats coming over to do what you want or "no deal." The nation is tired of all that and you are not serving the citizenry by doing that.

Democrats

• Go play the lottery right now. Why? You just got REALLY LUCKY. Recognize that Obama's victory is not some sort of massive mandate for his leadership and ideas. You should not gloat. 
• It's time to get specific. A lot of Obama's campaign - and many Congressional candidates too - was more about not electing the opposition (and wow, the Rs sure put up candidates that were easy to target that way). You did not really run on a clear vision with specific ideas for the next few years. You need to get specific. Set a few clear goals and work to get them done. 
• You too need to work with the Rs. You need to try and work with conservatives to achieve your clear goals. That should be your default first move. It's the right thing to do and will likely result in more things getting done. But...you also need to know how to put pressure on the Republicans if or when they revert to simply obstructing everything you want to do. Figure out what will motivate them and exploit that. 

Electoral College Map Will Tell the Story

As the Presidential election heats up this summer, rolls into the conventions and then heads down the home stretch in the fall you will see a lot of national polls saying Obama is at X%, Romney at Y% in the polls. And that'll be OK for what it is. And you'll hear plenty about those numbers.

But, as we all know from our civics class (and as was so dramatically brought home to us in the 2000 election) who gets the most overall votes is not necessarily the winner. In fact, that's not a measure of winning or losing at all in U.S. Presidential elections.

Nope. Let me re-introduce you to "the electoral college." While there are a lot of details to it, basically, each state counts for a certain amount of "electoral votes" based on the number of Congressional seats and Senatorial seats it has. So, a state like California has a lot of electoral votes while a state like North Dakota has very few.

Anyway, the way you win the Presidency is you win enough states to get you to a majority of the electoral college - 270 electoral votes.

This means that it's not really one big race the two Presidential candidates are running, but rather 50 separate races...focusing on whatever strategy and states they think will get them to the magical 270 vote electoral vote count.

All that to say...one way you can keep track of how things are going for real in the race is to look at an Electoral College Scoreboard map and track how things are going for your candidate over the next few months. There are quite a few out there. The one I'm currently looking at is HERE.

You can see that based on up-to-date polling in all the states that Obama would win more electoral votes than Romney at this point, but not enough to get 270 electoral votes. Not surprisingly, we see several key states with lots of electoral votes are in the "tossup" category. If one candidate were to win a few more of these than the other...that candidate will be the next President.

It's also kind of fun to see where each candidate has their strongest support. For example, check out the huge lead Obama has in California, NY and Washington State. Makes sense. Then look at Romney-land. Big leads in the South and rural states...also not surprising.

Here's to some interesting map watching.