CNN’s Candy Crowley and Kyra Phillips

Kyra Phillips: Candy Crowley watching I guess this peculiar piece of Americana, right Candy? We were talking earlier on the phone and you said Mr. Obama really has not been the President-Elect since November.

Candy Crowley: This makes it official. In the constitution congress has to do this, and that is count the electoral votes. Listen we all know how its going to come out, let me just take the suspense out, 365 to 173, Barack Obama wins over McCain but this is something they have to do. It looks very much, if you see that picture, it looks a lot like a state of the union address. The president pro-tem of the senate which is Dick Cheney, is supposed to preside if he is not there. We will see Senator Robert Byrd, the longest serving member of the senate. He's from West Virginia. So, it is pro-forma but it is also what makes it legal.

Keep reading

Annette Gordon-Reed
Special to CNN

By now, it has become almost a cliché: "I never thought I'd live to see it happen."

That common reaction to the election of Barack Obama, an African-American, to the presidency of the United States captures much about the country's troubled racial history.

Black people have been a presence on the North American continent from the early 1600s, and the 1500s if you count the Spanish settlement at St. Augustine, Florida.

Yet, the fact that we were brought to America as slaves and had to wage a centuries-long battle for freedom - and then for civic and civil rights - has often shaped perceptions about what is and is not possible for blacks to achieve.

Keep Reading...

Kennedy is interested in Clinton's Senate seat.

Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of President John F. Kennedy, has a "definite interest" in filling the New York Senate seat being vacated by Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, three sources confirm to CNN.

Two of the sources are close to Kennedy and the third is a senior Democratic operative. Kennedy's interest in the seat could mean the continuation of a family legacy in the Senate that began 56 years ago with the election of her father as the then-junior senator from Massachusetts.

Her uncle Ted has represented Massachusetts in the Senate since 1963. Her uncle Robert served as New York's junior senator from 1965 until he was assassinated in 1968.

"Remember, this (Clinton's) seat in the Senate was once held by Robert Kennedy," CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider said. "Her other uncle, Ted Kennedy, is ill right now. If (New York Gov. David) Paterson appoints Caroline Kennedy to the Senate, it means there could be a Kennedy staying in the Senate for quite a long time."

Before this year, Kennedy generally limit her forays into the public sphere to non-partisan activity, penning books on civil liberties and serving as the de facto guardian of her father's legacy.

But in January, she backed a political candidate for the first time, announcing her endorsement of Obama during the Democratic primary season with an op-ed in the New York Times that drew days of the kind of media attention she has spent her life avoiding.

"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," she wrote. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."

"Apparently she has acquired a taste for politics," Schneider noted. "She wants to be part of this new regime in America, clearly playing a key role in the Senate if she gets that appointment."

– CNN's John King and Kate Bolduan, and Mark Preston contributed

to this report.

Jonathan Soros
Wall Street Journal

In his election-night victory speech, Barack Obama said he would be a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him. But as a candidate he didn't campaign with equal vigor for every vote. Instead, he and John McCain devoted more than 98% of their television ad spending and campaign events to just 15 states which together make up about a third of the U.S. population.

Today, as the Electoral College votes are cast and counted state-by-state, we will be reminded why. It is the peculiar mechanics of that institution, designed for a different age, that leave us divided into red states, blue states and swing states. That needs to change.

The Electoral College was created in 1787 by a constitutional convention whose delegates were unconvinced that the election of the president could be entrusted to an unfiltered vote of the people, and were concerned about the division of power among the 13 states. It was antidemocratic by design.

Under the system, each state receives votes equal to the number of representatives it has in the House plus one for each of its senators. Less populated states are thus overrepresented. While this formula hasn't changed, it no longer makes a difference for the majority of states. Wyoming, with its three electoral votes, has no more influence over the selection of the president or on the positions taken by candidates than it would with one vote.

Read More...

Colin Powell talks with Fareed Zakaria about the Republican campaign and Gov. Sarah Palin's influence on the ticket.

Program Note: Don't miss  "Fareed Zakaria GPS" this Sunday at 1pm ET, for an exclusive interview with Fmr. Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Errol Louis
Daily News

Expectations for Barack Obama, already high, jumped even higher when his aide and longtime confidante, Valerie Jarrett, announced that the President-elect plans to create a White House office dedicated to urban affairs.

That would make good on a promise Obama made... "We need to stop seeing our cities as the problem and start seeing them as the solution. Strong cities are the building blocks of strong regions, and strong regions are essential for a strong America..."

That sounds great, but it lacks a certain audacity....
Read more...

Barack Obama and John McCain at the end of their final presidential debate.

James Carney
Time Magazine

Less than two weeks ago, on election night, John McCain pledged to do "all in my power to help [Barack Obama] lead us through the many challenges we face." On Monday, McCain will travel to Chicago to discuss ways he can fulfill that promise in a private meeting with the President-elect.

There were some who doubted the sincerity of McCain's pledge, coming so soon after the end of a campaign that featured a series of personal attacks on Obama. But it pays to remember that the self-styled maverick was never very comfortable as the standard bearer of a party that he had opposed so many times on so many issues. And the party long felt the same way.

Last Friday brought notice that the relationship between the two would soon be returning to form when South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint became the first high-profile Republican to lay the blame for McCain's loss on McCain himself. "We have to be honest, and there's a lot of blame to go around," DeMint told a GOP gathering in Myrtle Beach, S.C. "But I have to mention George Bush, and I have to mention Ted Stevens, and I'm afraid I even have to mention John McCain." DeMint then offered a list of McCain's anti-conservative apostasies, including his support for campaign finance reform, immigration reform and legislation aimed at combating global warming.

The items on DeMint's list of lament read like talking points to jump-start Monday afternoon's conversation in Chicago between McCain and Obama. According to an Obama aide, the President-elect views McCain as a potential ally on the kind of reform issues for which the two men share broad agreement. "There are areas of general agreement and beliefs — on immigration, earmark reform, energy, climate change, government reform, spending reform," says the aide. "Where there's agreement on both sides, they want to figure out ways they can work together."

Read more...

Jennifer Donahue
NHIOP Political Director & Harvard IOP Fellow

The main Republican talking point coming out of the shock and awe election last week is that we are a "center-right country." Tell me then, how did Barack Obama get elected by an overwhelming electoral sweep and a decisive popular vote differential? How did the Democrats keep and grow control in Congress?

David Brooks outlined on Tuesday the split between the "reformists" and the "traditionalists" in the Republican party. The center-right tension exists within, not outside, the Republican party. With 51% of people polled saying they want to see a more activist government, the highest number since 1992, surely we are at least a center-center country right now.

A 2007 PEW center poll found that from 1994 till now, 12 percent more Americans feel the "government should care for those who can't care for themselves... even if it means greater debt."

As a political analyst, I like evidence. I like to describe what is, not what is "brandable". The idea that we are a "center-right" country is wishful spin, considering that we voted differently.

David Gergen
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Political Analyst

I went back to look at the last speech that Martin Luther King gave in 1968, the day before he was assassinated.

King said, “I just want to do God's will. He's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promise land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight we as a people will get to the promise land.”

It seems to me that for an awful lot of people in this country, especially for African Americans, Barack Obama has said that he's part of the Joshua Generation. Martin Luther King was our Moses. We haven't ended our prejudice, but there's something about this evening and election that has made an awful lot of people feel this is the Joshua Generation, we can do something we thought we could never reach 30, 40, 50 years ago.

Editor's Note: You can read more Lisa Bloom blogs on “In Session”

Lisa Bloom
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

YES WE DID!, I wrote in giant letters on my Facebook page on election night, tears in my eyes as I watched Barack Obama’s inspiring acceptance speech. Every moment of it was so moving. And when I heard my African-American friends talk about the symbolism of this day, that they can look into their children’s eyes and honestly say that we are all now truly equal – well, as a lifelong civil rights activist, I thought, it has happened. We shall overcome, not someday, but today.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said the night before he was assassinated, “And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land.” Hallelujah, I thought, we have arrived. Free at last, free at last.

Then I remembered my gay friends, who faced ugly ballot measures in four states. The California Supreme Court just last May issued a landmark ruling that gay people were entitled to equal marriage rights. My mother, Gloria Allred, was one of the lead attorneys in that case. I remembered Del Martin and Phyllis Lyons, together for 55 years, who were the first couple married after that decision, one in a wheelchair, the other walking slowly to the altar. “At our age,” they said, “we don’t have the luxury of time.” I remembered that on the day of that decision, citizens of San Francisco’s Castro District took down their rainbow flags and flew American flags. “For the first time in my life,” they told me, “I feel like a full citizen. I can tell my children that in the eyes of the law I am just as worthy as anyone else.” I remembered riding in Santa Monica’s gay pride parade alongside my mother in June, getting mobbed by thousands of ordinary people who were grateful that she had won for them the extraordinary privilege of simple respect.
Keep reading