Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent

Bump into John McCain in a Capitol hallway these days, and you’re lucky if you get anything beyond a polite hello. Ask him a question on any policy or political issue, and he will almost always decline comment, and keep moving.

But the former Republican presidential nominee is not planning to keep a low profile for long.

CNN has learned that McCain may get seats on an unusually high number of key senate committees, so that he can engage on a wide range of high profile issues before congress, and his formal rival in the White House.

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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.

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Editor’s Note: Leslie Sanchez is a former adviser to President Bush and CEO of Impacto Group, which specializes in market research about women and Hispanics for its corporate and nonprofit clients.

Leslie Sanchez | Bio
CNN Political Contributor
Republican Strategist

Ever since John McCain and Howard Dean in 2000 showed the Internet's potential for fundraising, the question was always whether the Web could be effective at "GOTV," or getting-out-the-vote.

Among young voters at least, Barack Obama has proven that it can - and, in the process, he's uncovered a major flaw that cuts to the core of the Republicans' approach to party organization and discipline.

Obama poured many of his campaign's millions into his social networking operations on the Web, which his campaign rightly saw as critical to building grassroots support and enthusiasm.

A community organizer by training, occupation and nature, Obama saw his databases for the potential they represented - an army of supportive voices, a legion of potential volunteers, and a division of precinct captains.

Such is the world not just of Chicago ward organizations, but of politics everywhere.

The McCain campaign, reflecting the broader skepticism I've seen in the GOP about the Web, doubted whether the Internet could get voters out of their Barcaloungers (or, in the case of younger voters, off their futons) and into the polling booth.

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Tim Lister
CNN Executive Editor

Why all this fuss about ‘redistribution?’ In the waning days of the election campaign, Senator McCain combined the word with socialism to condemn [now] President-elect Obama’s tax policies. It was always a crowd-pleaser with the faithful. The line of attack sprang from Obama’s legendary encounter with Joe the Plumber, when he said: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.”

My friends and acquaintances back in Europe found it intriguing that a remark like this should be cause for controversy. Many a party and political career in Europe has been built on the principle of redistributing wealth. In Britain, the Labour Party’s constitution includes this vision of society: “a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few.” And that’s the party of Blair and Brown, not exactly socialist firebrands. Even parties of the center-right in Europe embrace redistribution through progressive tax policies.

The English philosopher and godfather of the free market, Adam Smith, wrote in ‘The Wealth of Nations”: "It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue but something more than in that proportion." The year Smith finished his famous book, the American colonists mutinied against the British government’s plan to impose taxes on them, in effect a plan to redistribute their wealth to His Majesty’s Treasury. Maybe that’s the source of the very different attitudes toward redistribution.

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A new voter registers at a Democratic Party booth in September in Denver, Colorado.

Marisa Trevino
Latina Lista

The importance of the Latino vote is now an irrefutable fact. Not because Barack Obama was able to garner 67 percent of the Latino vote versus Sen. McCain’s 31 percent, but because Latinos turned out in record numbers in key battleground states turning the electoral college tide in Obama’s favor....

Since this is politics, the kind of support Latino voters gave the Democratic Party did come with strings attached. The big question is does that payback come in the form of a key Cabinet position going to a Latino/a or can it be satisfied with the Obama Administration addressing in his first 100 days an issue that was among the top three for Latino voters...

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Sen. John McCain and President-elect Barack Obama meet Monday in Chicago, Illinois.

Ed Henry
CNN White House Correspondent

Beyond the written statement with all the happy talk, one senior Obama transition official said the President-elect and Senator McCain also discussed a couple of hot-button issues – closing Gitmo and reforming the immigration system.

The official said that while the two men are in “broad agreement” about the need to shut the military prison down, they are still a long way from figuring out the details on how to implement it. But the official said this is one of many issues where the Obama team is “very pleased” that McCain is showing a willingness to work with the incoming President.

On immigration, the official acknowledged they didn’t get too far into the details and it’s a longshot they can get reform next year but they were pleased by how the meeting featured a lot of “very cooperative” promises.

The official said the other issues discussed included a “whole series of reform issues” ranging from McCain’s favorite – earmark reform – to even defense procurement issues.

The official jokingly added there was “no fistfight” as they largely steered clear of issues of disagreement from the campaign

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."

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Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

What a difference two weeks make.  Barack Obama is meeting in Chicago today with John McCain.  I’m sure McCain is looking forward to it.  Because there is nothing at all humiliating about flying halfway across the country to hear the guy who beat you say, “John, don’t forget to have my secretary validate the parking for your Hertz rental.”

Meanwhile, the guessing game continues about whether the president-elect will nominate his longtime ally Hillary “Shame on you Barack Obama” Clinton to be Secretary of State over such vocal critics as John “Barack Obama can help our country turn the page” Kerry and Bill “Barack Obama will be a great and historic president” Richardson.

There is concern among some that there could be conflicts of interest between Hillary Clinton’s leadership of the State Department and her husband’s overseas business dealings.  With that in mind, the Obama transition office is looking into the former president’s fundraising, consulting deals and speaking fees.  And his stint as a greeter at the Riyadh Wal-Mart.

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Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

Well, it’s about time.  Now that the presidential election is over America can return its focus to that which is truly important.  For example, perhaps you’ve been so caught up in politics that you didn’t know Jennifer Aniston is on the cover of next month’s Vogue.  And inside the magazine she discusses her new Christmas movie: “It’s a Wonderful Life…Until Angelina Jolie Steals Your Husband.”

Then there’s Lindsay “Hey Anderson Cooper, if you think my mother is a trainwreck just wait until you hear my political analysis” Lohan, who offered her take on the election to that venerable chronicler of American history known as Access Hollywood. “It’s an amazing thing,” she said, “it’s our first colored president.”  Thanks, Archie Bunker.  You can stop talking now.

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Blake Cabot
Technology Entrepreneur

I’m a fiscal conservative, and have been a Republican all my life. Although the social values issues pushed by Republicans over the past two decades have never appealed to me, I believe in international trade and less government, as long as it’s not accompanied by a ballooning deficit. And I expect competence.

But there has been no accountability in the Bush Administration: After Abu Ghraib and the disasters of Iraq, Bush didn’t fire Rumsfeld or any other senior member of his staff. So John Kerry had my vote in 2004, though I wasn’t happy about it. And adding $5 trillion to the debt - as Bush has done - is not fiscally conservative.

McCain’s idea of lowering taxes for everyone across the board – when we’re already adding hundreds of billions of dollars of debt – pushed me over the edge. And then to have Republicans call Obama a socialist, while they were nationalizing a huge part of the national economy – well, that has nothing to do with the Republican Party that I grew up in.

By contrast, Obama’s take on issues made a lot of sense to me, and he was inspiring as a public speaker – especially his speech in Iowa about how this whole country needed drastic changes.

So I decided this was the election of my generation and signed up to go work for Obama in mid-summer. On September 13th, I headed to Camp Obama in Brooklyn. The camp felt very much like business school training, focusing on motivation, management techniques, and specific tasks to be done in the field. Ten days later I was on my way to Lebanon, Pennsylvania as a deputy field organizer.

Lebanon is a largely Republican county in the middle of the state. Once a German Dutch settlement, the area had gone from union Democrat to socially conservative Reagan Republican, and remained overwhelmingly white.

I stayed at the home of local volunteers who housed me for over six weeks. I would come back often exhausted late in the evening, but there was Don, waiting up for me, to make sure I was home safe and fill me in on what had been happening. Toward the end of the campaign, as the nights became longer and more grueling, I found myself getting back at 4 or 5 a.m. There was Don, more than once, waking up and giving me a hug. My host couple couldn’t have been more wonderful.

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