Washington:
US President Barack Obama will address the election results with a news conference on Wednesday afternoon at the White House, where he is expected to call for both parties to put aside the vitriol of the last several months and work together to restore the nation's economy.
The president spent Election Day in the White House, closing out the campaign season with a last-minute flurry of radio interviews on hip-hop stations in selected urban markets, including Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Jacksonville, Fla. He sent one final e-mail to his huge list of supporters, urging them to get to the polls, with a link to help voters find their polling stations.
"I need you to make sure your voice is heard," the message said. "Figure out when you will vote and how you will get there."
In an effort to reach young voters, Mr. Obama also granted a 10-minute interview to Ryan Seacrest, the host of "American Idol." In the interview, which was broadcast Tuesday on Mr. Seacrest's radio program, Mr. Obama bantered about "date night" with his wife and whether he was offended that Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" called him "dude." (He was not.)
The Election Day radio blitz -- which continued into the early evening, when Mr. Obama added two more interviews to his schedule -- capped weeks of intense effort by the president to drive voter turnout; he spent the weekend zipping around the East Coast and the Midwest trying to close what aides called the "enthusiasm gap" between Democrats and Republicans. Tuesday's radio interviews were aimed at enticing not only young voters, but also African-Americans and other minority voters to the polls.
In Las Vegas, where the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, was in a neck-and-neck race with the Tea Party-backed Republican candidate, Sharron Angle, listeners to Hot 97.5 KVEG heard Mr. Obama make a direct pitch to Latinos.
"The Latino vote is crucial," he said, "and obviously when you look at some of the stuff that has been going on during this election campaign that has tried to fan anti-immigrant sentiment, I know that a lot of Latinos, you know, feel under assault."
In Chicago, where Democrats worried that the Senate seat Mr. Obama once held would switch to Republican hands, the president warned of the dangers of Republican control.
"My hope is that I can cooperate with Republicans," he said on 107.5 WGCI, "but obviously the kinds of compromises that are going to be made will depend on what Capitol Hill looks like, you know, who's in charge."
"If we've got Republicans in charge," he said, "they will want to dictate the terms of those compromises. That means their desire to roll back health care reform, which they've already announced, or their desire to roll back financial regulatory reform, which they've already announced, that's going to be their agenda. They're going to try to move that forward."
Mr. Obama can be expected to take a slightly more conciliatory tone on Wednesday, especially if Republicans, as expected, make significant gains or take control of one or both chambers of Congress. Mr. Obama is scheduled to leave Washington on Friday for a nine-day trip to India, Indonesia, South Korea and Japan, and aides would like to get the election results behind him so that he is not dogged by domestic concerns while overseas.
White House officials were tight-lipped Tuesday on precisely how the president would frame his message. But after months of arguing that the elections are not a referendum on him, Mr. Obama is unlikely to declare, as his predecessor, George W. Bush, did when Democrats took control of Congress in 2006, that he had taken "a thumping."
Presidents who suffer tough losses at the polls typically greet the results by offering some variation on the theme that "the people have spoken," and in Mr. Obama's case, it will be especially important for him to do so, said Bill Galston, who advised former President Bill Clinton on domestic policy.
"He has to reaffirm, and this sounds like meaningless ritual, his commitment to the basic democratic principle that it is ultimately the people who rule," Mr. Galston said. "The reason that's not simply ritual in his case is that there have been accusations, especially in the case of the health care bill, that the administration has moved without due attention to public opinion."