David Maraniss: “Second terms often bring a new set of frustrations for a president,
following the laws of diminishing returns and lame-duckiness. But
history also shows that a second term is required to create, or to
ratify, presidential greatness — and in that sense, Obama is not
ambivalent about his ambitions. Since he first thought about being
president, a notion that came to him relatively late compared with most
politicians, he has wanted to be a great one. When he stepped onto the
stage Tuesday night, he realized that he has that chance.”

The CEO of Murray Energy, an Ohio-based coal company, said the reelection of President Obama “was no cause for celebration. It was a time for prayer – and layoffs,” the Washington Post reports.

Robert Murray read a prayer to a group of company staff members on the day after the election, lamenting the direction of the country and asking: “Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build.”

He then announced layoffs of 156 people at two subsidiaries.

This is the same company that forced its employees to attend a Mitt Romney rally last summer and lose pay as a result.

President Obama delivered a statement today, his first to the White House press corps since winning reelection, on the budget issues facing Congress in the lame duck session.

The president did not take questions, as BuzzFeed notes, the first time a reelected president has done so since before Ronald Reagan’s reelection in 1984.

Lexington: “Todd Akin did not implode as a Senate candidate because of his stern opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest: many Republicans in Congress share those views. His downfall came because in trying to deny that his principles involved a trade-off with compassion for rape victims he came up with the unscientific myth that the bodies of women subjected to rape can shut down a pregnancy.”

“It was a telling moment of denial, much like the comforting myth that there is no such thing as climate change or, if there is, that humans are not involved. Ensconced in a parallel world of conservative news sources and conservative arguments, all manner of comforting alternative visions of reality surfaced during the 2012 election. Many, like Mr Akin’s outburst, involved avoiding having to think about unwelcome things (often basic science or economics). It became a nostrum among rank-and-file Republicans that mainstream opinion polls are biased and should be ignored, for instance, and that voter fraud is rampant and explains much of the Democrats’ inner-city support. Both conspiracies sounded a lot like ways of wishing the other side away.”

Joshua Spivak reports there were 22 Election Day recall races and 12 officials were removed from office while 10 survived.

“The most prominent recalls — the Troy, Michigan Mayor and the San Fernando, California Mayor and Two Council members — saw the officials kicked out. Two of the multi-official recalls saw a split decision, which is generally unusual. Most multi-official recalls are clean sweeps, one way or the other.”

“And in other recall-related news, one of the Wisconsin Senators who gained office in the 2011 recalls lost and the state Senate flipped from Democratic to Republican. In Arizona, the state Senator who ousted Senate Majority Leader Russell Pearce in the 2011 recall lost his seat.”

Many Romney insiders blame Newt Gingrich’s attacks in the GOP primaries for Mitt Romney’s loss in the presidential election, Fortune reports.

Said one consultant: “No one in the campaign believed that Republicans would attack business enterprise in a primary contest. That was, in hindsight, a big mistake.”

The source goes on to explain: “By late summer there wasn’t even one particular thing he did at Bain that really mattered anymore. In fact, you didn’t even have to say Bain. People just instinctively believed that he had outsourced people, fired people, not cared about people. It wasn’t about what had actually happened, or about policy. It wasn’t substantive. But it got the job done.””

Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) had a simple explanation for why Republicans didn’t do better in U.S. Senate races, Ben Smith reports.

And it wasn’t about the party being too conservative.

Said Barbour: “We had some shitty candidates. We pissed away two seats.”

“There’s plenty of time to think about 2016. We’ve got to get this economy working. If three years from now the economy is not working, it’s not going to be worth doing much. This is all about making Barack an incredibly successful second-term president. That’s my focus.”

— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Wilmington News Journal, on whether he’ll run for president in 2016.

Newly-reelected Rep. Steve King (R-IA) says it’s too early to talk about the next election, but isn’t closing the door on challenging Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) in 2014, the Cedar Rapids Gazette reports.

Said King: “I know that’s something that is on the horizon, but I think there are some decisions that need to be made before I could comment on that.”

Linda McMahon (R), who spent nearly $100 million of her own money on two failed U.S. Senate bids from Connecticut, tells Businessweek when she learned she had lost.

Said McMahon: “I was sitting by myself, actually. I had just taken a moment to go upstairs and get my thoughts together on what I was still hoping would be a victory speech. I was just sitting there, going over my speech clearly you have a concession speech as well, but you’re hoping that’s not the one you use. I wasn’t paying that much attention to the TV. This was about 40 minutes after the polls closed. Then I looked up and saw a checkmark next to Chris Murphy’s name on ABC. I barely caught it out of the corner of my eye. I just thought, ‘Wow.’ I was stunned for a moment. I sat there for a few minutes on my own, reflecting on what the race had been.”

The New York Times reports that just a few hours after conceding to President Obama, Mitt Romney told his staff members that they had just witnessed his last political campaign. But he vowed, “I will not fall off the map.”

Some “predict he will write a book, convinced that the daily diary he kept on the campaign trail would make for a compelling read.”

Others “speculate that he will return to the corridors of finance” or that he’ll “take on a major role in the Mormon Church, picking up where he left off two decades ago.”