Post-election thoughts

• Reporting and analysis in the press as of Wednesday is much improved. Journalism, aside from editorial pages, is supposed to be fact-driven. Journalists now have facts to write about.
• Most white men of middle and upper incomes, who have run this country since 1776, voted Republican. They are frustrated to learn that demographics have made them a minority. Adding to their frustration, many of their wives voted Democrat.
• Nationally, Republicans blew it by running extremist candidates. The economy made Barack Obama vulnerable, and Mitt Romney himself might have won; but Romney's own party undermined him.
• The national question for Democrats is, who runs for President in 2016? Hillary Clinton is a good bet -- but for her to have a chance, Obama must get the economy moving without wrecking the federal government's balance sheet in the process.
• North Carolina Republicans have been granted broad power. Will Governor-elect Pat McCrory push a pragmatic centrist agenda as did his predecessor, the well-respected Jim Martin, or the right-wing agenda that many Republicans in the General Assembly prefer?
• Can the weakened North Carolina Democratic Party reelect Senator Kay Hagan in 2014, when she will be at the top of the ballot? Because of the national outcome Tuesday, her race will be hotly contested. The good news for Hagan is that Democrat incumbents on the NC Council of State were reelected despite the combined pull of Romney and McCrory.
• The de facto leader of NC Democrats, Attorney General Roy Cooper, was reelected without Republican opposition. Clearly he is waiting for a more propitious time to run for higher office. Will he wait too long?
• Big money might not have gotten the return on investment that it sought, but it wasn't entirely impotent. Ask Sam Ervin IV.