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The entry below is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Massachusetts finally did it!  It elected a woman to the U.S. Senate.  And what a woman she is!  After a miserable campaign start, in which she turned off even her supporters by appearing too prim, preachy, professorial and sometimes suffocatingly earnest, Elizabeth Warren finally got it. As the campaign moved away from her disappointing handling of the nettlesome issue of her Cherokee heritage, she became more sure of herself.  She blossomed.  Her affect brightened, and she projected warmth and authenticity.

Her intellect and creativity  were never in question, nor was her commitment to ordinary people and fostering economic opportunity for the middle class.  She was able to deal with Scott Brown’s occasionally bipartisan record by keeping the focus on what was at stake, Republican control of the Senate. Did voters really want  Mitch McConnell to become Senate President or Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, a climate change denier, to chair the committee on the environment? As the founder of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her creds in financial services are impressive; Wall Street was probably not too happy when Warren was the victor in the race. (There’s a sweet irony to her going to the Senate which blocked her appointment to head the newly created bureau.)

Her ebullience last night was infectious.  Her graciousness toward Brown was generous.  Her promise to “break partisan gridlock” was strategic and effective as she told Brown’s supporters, “I know I didn’t earn your votes, but I’m going to work to earn your support.”

Brown was equally generous (“She won it fair and square. May she bring that Senate office great credit”), affable, ever the frat boy, broadly smiling as if the gathering of disappointed supporters were just another pretty darned terrific party.  His most tantalizing remark was that “defeat is only temporary.”  It seems clear that he will run for office again.  The only question is whether it will be for U.S. Senate (if John Kerry replaces Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, opening up his seat) or for Massachusetts governor.  In a Senate special election, he would appear to be a prohibitive favorite, unless Deval Patrick got in the race. If Brown decided to wait to run for governor, would he go  head-to-head with 2010 Republican nominee Charlie Baker or would Baker simply defer to Brown?

In the end, Brown’s good guy image (increasingly tarnished by negative campaign advertising, compounded by his venomous attacks on Warren during their televised debates) wasn’t enough to overcome the 20-point Obama margin in the state, but it could sustain him as he lays plans to run again, possibly as soon as next year.

Brown acquired instant national stature when he unexpectedly upended Martha Coakley to capture the seat long held by Ted Kennedy. Warren’s expertise in consumer and bankruptcy law, her determination in creating the consumer financial bureau, and her willingness to stand up to Wall St. had given her national stature even before she decided to run. Assuming she doesn’t limit her effectiveness by being reflexively partisan, she has the potential to be not just a star, but a real leader.  She’s going to be very interesting to watch.

I welcome your comments in the section below.

The following entry is being cross-posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. It was originally post on November 7, the day after the election.

Last night’s outcome was clearcut and gratifying, but the future is as complicated as ever. President Obama performed beyond many expectations in the electoral votes, garnering nearly 100 more than Romney before final numbers are in from Florida.  Obama carried all the swing states but North Carolina. He won among women, minorities and young people – everyone but whites, especially rich white men.  Romney, whose party is on the wrong side of demographic destiny, led among the elderly and those who oppose abortion, gay marriage, citizenship paths for illegal immigrants, and more progressive taxation.

Compared to the brilliant 21st century political “Moneyball-on-steroids organizing approach of the Obama campaign, Romney’s micro targeting of voters and get-out-the-vote operation were almost of the Gilded Age.  All the money advantage, spawned by Citizens United, went for naught.

Ironically, the numbers-driven Romney, who emotionally at the end seemed to think he had a path to victory, was beaten by a bloodless brain trust of quants that knew what it needed to do and executed the game plan to perfection (save for the first debate debacle.)

Fortunately for the President, he also won the popular vote, albeit by less than in 2008. Had he lost that, even while winning the electoral vote, his detractors would have tried to delegitimize his Presidency.  Winning with just over 50 percent, with nearly half the voters opposed to him or his policies and other millions of registered voters not caring enough to go to the polls, he is not in the same position as last time to claim a clear mandate.

The American people, while dissatisfied with the pace of the economic recovery, apparently believe the trend line is in the right direction.  Last night, the President asserted “We are not as divided as our politics suggest.”  Mitt Romney, in his gracious concession speech,  said, “We can’t risk partisan bickering and political posturing. Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people’s work.”  Even John Boehner said, “If there is a mandate, it is a mandate to fund common ground.”

But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who would have been Senate President but for the preservation of the Democratic majority in the upper branch, was more acid, saying,” it’s time for the president to propose solutions that actually have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and a closely divided Senate, step up to the plate on the challenges of the moment, and deliver in a way that he did not in his first four years in office.”

It is still unclear whether the defeat of extremist Republicans Todd Akin of Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, both in states that went for Romney, will loosen the hold of the Tea Party on the Republican leadership and incentivize moderation.  Had Mourdock won, the prospects for change would have been a lot less.

The next step is for the President to reach out immediately to longstanding critics in the House and Senate so the nation can avert the plunge off the fiscal cliff implicit in the sequestration budget or in simply kicking the can down the road.

The day after the election, the stock market dove more than 300 points. This morning the Wall Street Journal averred, “the republic will survive.”  Under Obama 1, we avoided the fiscal cliff and did survive.  In Obama 2, we need to prosper.

I welcome your comments in the section below.