Newt Gingrich — traveling the country promoting his latest novel — told the Naples News that he he has not ruled out running for president in 2016 — but first the GOP must take on a “very serious analysis” of what went wrong in 2012.

Said Gingrich: “Republicans have to stop and take a deep breath.”

Polly Judd told the AP she is skeptical of talk that her famous granddaughter, actress Ashley Judd, might run for U.S. Senate against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

Said Judd: “I don’t think there’s any possibility of that happening… I think Mitch has done more for Ashland than anybody else who has been in there. That means a lot. He’s been here personally, and we don’t always get that from politicians who represent us.”

Of her granddaughter, she added: “She’s a Hollywood liberal. It would be interesting to see what type of race she would run.”

“Nancy Pelosi decided to take one more crack at winning back the House, but a big obstacle stands between the Democratic leader and the speaker’s gavel in 2014: the six-year itch,” Politico reports.

“Pelosi’s party will be swimming against the riptide of history. The party controlling the White House during a president’s sixth year in office has lost seats in every midterm election but one since 1918, when Woodrow Wilson occupied the Oval Office. And the setbacks typically aren’t small: The average loss in these elections was 30 seats. The exception was 1998, when a soaring economy and Republicans’ focus on President Bill Clinton’s affair helped Democrats buck the trend and pick up a handful of seats.”

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) will announce tomorrow morning that she is running in 2014 for the seat now held by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), West Virginia Metro News reports.

“The announcement sets up a potential race between two West Virginia political heavyweights… Rockefeller has indicated that he plans to run for re-election in 2014, but there continues to be speculation that he may retire at the end of this term.”

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) returned to Congress after a U.S. Senate campaign “that left him vilified for his verbal missteps and blamed for his role in the Republican Party’s dismal showing in the elections,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Though he’ll be out of work when the new Congress takes over in January, Akin “is hopeful about what lies ahead. He said he is considering taking advantage of his new fame by writing a book — something Sen. Claire McCaskill, the victor in his race, also has discussed.”

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.)”