TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

POST-ELECTION

• Vast Obama network becomes a political football-Some Obama advisors want to blend his campaign operation with the Democratic National Committee. Others worry that such a move could cause the grass-roots organization to unravel. (LA Times) "A lot of these warriors on the ground are not Democrats, and that's by choice," Figueroa said.
• Obama carries precincts in traditionally Republican Inland region by substantial margins (Press Enterprise - southern CA) The results suggest that many of the region's increasing number of independent voters -- those who decline to state a party affiliation -- went for Obama.
• America Throws Long - If Obama doesn't connect, more than the game is lost. (By PEGGY NOONAN, Wall Street Journal) Does it mark the beginning of a center-left era? That's the kind of thing you know in retrospect. The vote will prove to be a realigning one if Mr. Obama does well enough over a long enough period that people come to see themselves not as voters who picked him but as people who are his followers. If they choose to follow him, their self-identification as Democrats will sink in and formalize, and the vote they cast in 2008 will come to seem not a decision but an affiliation. Without affiliation, everything remains in play and will be in play in the coming years. If Mr. Obama doesn't catch the pass and cross the goal line, it will mean this election marked a moment, not a movement.
• Lurching center-left (Washington Times) It is now abundantly clear that America is a center-left nation, and healthy majorities of the American people agree with Mr. Obama's liberal economic policies.
• OR: A blue election tide -- or a white one? (The Oregonian/The Stump) While the rest of the nation celebrates a transformational election that couldn't have taken place without minorities in general and Barack Obama in particular gaining access to political power, the Oregon Legislature will convene in 2009 as the least diverse it's been in decades.