{"id":824,"date":"2012-11-07T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T13:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2012\/11\/07\/election-is-over-now-lets-get-back-to-work"},"modified":"2012-11-07T13:55:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T13:55:00","slug":"election-is-over-now-lets-get-back-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=824","title":{"rendered":"Election is over; now let\u2019s get back to work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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What a night. Everyone \u201cin the know\u201d seemed to think Americans were in for an all-nighter, waiting for the returns to determine who would win the presidency.<\/p>\n

Turns out the experts had it wrong. President Obama\u2019s re-election came in shortly after 10 p.m. Central time. Bingo. Done. <\/p>\n

Mitt Romney gave his concession speech and offered to work to bridge the divide that splits Democrats and Republicans. Barack Obama reciprocated, offering to meet with Romney to seek common ground.<\/p>\n

Will this be the result of the amazingly divided outcome? Let us hope so. <\/p>\n

But at least two key points need to be made before we start looking too far into the future. <\/p>\n

* <\/strong>Obama\u2019s re-election doesn\u2019t constitute a \u201cmandate.\u201d He is leading, with almost all the votes counted, with a little more than 50 percent of the popular vote. Romney\u2019s 48 percent of the total isn\u2019t chump change. The split still suggests an extremely divided country. George W. Bush declared after his re-election that he intended to spend his \u201cpolitical capital\u201d earned. W\u2019s re-election margin was about the same as Obama\u2019s, meaning that he to find a magnanimous streak while governing. Obama needs to do more to reach out to Republicans who, for their part, need to set aside their anger at Obama. They failed in their mission to \u201cmake Barack Obama a one-term mission.\u201d Get over it, GOP.<\/p>\n

* The House is more Republican than before. The Senate\u2019s Democratic majority is stronger than before. The Congress itself is divided. One commentator said this morning that now is the time for Obama to summon House Speaker John Boehner, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to the White House; he should set them down and lay out Priority No. 1, which is to start producing results for the country.<\/p>\n

Those of us who are pleased with the outcome need not crow over beating the other guys. And the other guys need not spend a solitary minute looking for recriminations. The country has been through a contentious, occasionally bitter, presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s over. And as it has been said many times, the nation endures. <\/p>\n

Time to get back to work.<\/p>\n\n

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What a night. Everyone \u201cin the know\u201d seemed to think Americans were in for an all-nighter, waiting for the returns to determine who would win the presidency. Turns out the experts had it wrong. President Obama\u2019s re-election came in shortly after 10 p.m. Central time. Bingo. Done. Mitt Romney gave his concession speech and offered … Continue reading Election is over; now let\u2019s get back to work<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}