President Obama finished more strongly in the South than any other Democratic presidential nominee in three decades, “underscoring a fresh challenge for Republicans who rely on Southern whites as their base of national support,” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama won Virginia and Florida and narrowly missed victory in North Carolina. But he also polled as well in Georgia as any Democrat since Jimmy Carter, grabbed 44 percent of the vote in deep-red South Carolina and just under that in Mississippi — despite doing no substantive campaigning in any of those states.”

“Much of the post-election analysis has focused on the demographic crisis facing Republicans among Hispanic voters, particularly in Texas. But the results across other parts of the South, where Latinos remain a single-digit minority, point to separate trends among blacks and whites that may also have big implications for the GOP’s future.”

“The Democratic sweep at the top of Pennsylvania’s ballot has so energized the party that three prospective candidates are already sending out strong signals of interest in contesting Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s re-election bid two years from now,” the AP reports.

Tom Wolf (D), Tom Knox (D) and John Hanger (D) have all said they are seriously considering seeking the 2014 Democratic nomination or have already decided to run. Former Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA) also said he is “very interested” in returning to public service but would not discuss his plans for 2014.

Ruling out a gubernatorial campaign: Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and former Gov. Ed Rendell (D).

Rahm Emanuel: “Too much post-election analysis has focused on voter demographics and campaign mechanics, leaving Democrats in danger of drawing the wrong lessons from our electoral success.”

“Demographics alone are not destiny. There is nothing in this year’s election returns that guarantees Democrats a permanent majority in the years to come. President Obama and the Democratic Party earned the support of key groups — young people, single women, Latinos, African Americans, auto workers in the Rust Belt and millions of other middle-class Americans — because of our ideas. But we cannot expect Republicans to cede the economic argument so readily, or to fall so far short on campaign mechanics, the next time around. So, instead of resting on false assurances of underlying demographic advantages, the Democratic Party must follow through on our No. 1 priority, which the president set when he took office and reemphasized throughout this campaign: It is time to come home and rebuild America.”

Donald Trump’s hatred of President Obama “allegedly led his three eldest kids to do an Obama-vention before the election. Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka discussed telling their dad to calm down, then decided collectively to approach Trump and ask him to turn it down a notch with the presidential bashing,” the New York Daily News reports.

Said a source: “The three of them met and went to see their dad in his Fifth Ave. office. They showed a lot of respect, but told him he’s worked too long and too hard to build up the reputation he has. They understand completely he’s always been outspoken and that he likes attention, but this is too much.”

“I think Huntsman would have been a very tough general election candidate. He’s a good guy. We looked at his profile in a general election and thought he would have been difficult.”

— Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, in an interview with Politico, saying Jon Huntsman would have been the toughest Republican challenger in the 2012 presidential race.

New York Times: “Mr. Bush is said by friends to be weighing financial and family considerations — between so many years in office and the recession his wealth took a dip, they said, and he has been working hard to restore it — as well as the complicated place within the Republican Party of the Bush brand.”

“After Mitt Romney’s defeat by a Democratic coalition built around overwhelming support from Hispanics and other fast-growing demographic groups, many Republicans are looking for a candidate who can help make the party more inclusive without ceding conservative principles — and no one is the subject of more speculation at this point than Mr. Bush.”

“To his supporters, Mr. Bush is the man for the moment. His wife, Columba, was born and raised in Mexico. He speaks Spanish and favors overhauling the immigration system in a way that would provide a route to citizenship for people already in the country illegally but otherwise law-abiding.”

New York Times: “Come January, more than two-thirds of the states will be under single-party control, raising the prospect that bold partisan agendas — on both ends of the political spectrum — will flourish over the next couple of years.”

“Twenty-four states will be controlled by Republicans, including Alaska and Wisconsin, where the party took the State Senate, and North Carolina, where the governorship changed hands. At least 13 states will be Democratic, including Colorado, Minnesota and Oregon, where control of the legislatures shifted, and California, where the already dominant Democrats gained a supermajority in both chambers. (The situation in New York, where the potential for single-party control by the Democrats rests on the makeup of the Senate, is still uncertain.)”

Jonathan Chait: “The first few weeks after a losing presidential election are an awkward period for the most devoted ideological polemicist. Months of optimistic spin about your candidate must be cast aside for an entirely different sort of spin — where before the candidate was a budding juggernaut boldly carrying the party banner onward to victory, now we can see in hindsight that he was a hapless loser unable to articulate our side’s clearly winning vision. Transitioning from one line to another can often take months of careful tip-toeing. Commentary editor John Podhoretz offers up a magisterial postelection essay, The Way Forward, that instead simply takes the full plunge all at once.”

Wall Street Journal: “The tea-party movement is trying to regroup after taking some licks in this month’s elections. Several groups already are setting their sights on 2014 congressional races, in which they plan to promote their preferred candidates and hope to weed out Republicans they consider insufficiently conservative.”

“Many tea-party activists say they remain dumbfounded by the Nov. 6 defeat of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and favored GOP candidates for the Senate, and opinions are swirling over how the movement should push forward.”