Congressman Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat who represents Manhattan's West Side and parts of Brooklyn, was a panelist along with me this morning at a post-election breakfast in New York sponsored by Government Affairs Professionals and Winning Strategies Washington.

Mr. Nadler delivered what struck me as a surprisingly harsh assessment of President Obama, saying a reasonable jury would probably find him "guilty of political malpractice in the first degree," both for allowing himself to be negotiated into a stimulus that was "far too small" and too tilted toward unstimulative tax cuts, and also for his "extended use of Hooverite rhetoric to assure people that the economy is improving when it obviously isn't improving."

Mr. Nadler said that if unemployment stays high — as he predicted it will, given that the additional stimulus he said was needed to reduce it is now "politically impossible" — the consequence will be a Republican Senate and a Republican president in 2012, to be followed by a Democratic takeover of Congress in 2014.

San Francisco has joined Santa Clara County in banning toys in fast-food restaurant meals unless the meals meet certain nutritional and health standards, the New York Times notices. Earlier coverage of this issue on FutureOfCapitalism.com is here, here, and here.

Voters in Washington State rejected, 66% to 34%, the Bill Gates Sr.-backed ballot initiative to impose an income tax on those in the state who earn more than $200,000 a year, the Tax Foundation notes. Earlier coverage here and here.

The Federal Reserve, while telling the public that inflation is low, is spending $27 billion to buy protection for itself against inflation.

Today's statement from the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee said "Longer-term inflation expectations have remained stable, but measures of underlying inflation have trended lower in recent quarters" and "measures of underlying inflation are somewhat low." It also made reference to "subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations."

Yet the fine print of the accompanying statement by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York indicates that of the $900 billion in Treasury securities that the Federal Reserve Bank intends to purchase, 3%, or as much as $27 billion, will come in the form of TIPS, or Treasury Inflation Protection Securities. As the Treasury Web site explains, TIPS "provide protection against inflation."

President Obama gave a newsworthy post-election news conference this afternoon. Highlights:

On the substance, Mr. Obama said the "most important thing" that "has to be done in the lame duck session" of Congress is to "make sure that taxes don't go up on middle-class families next year."

"My goal is to make sure that we don't have a huge spike in taxes for middle class families," the president said, calling it "one of my top priorities," and echoing the "middle class" message that I noted emerging last night in the victory remarks of Senator Schumer and Senator-elect Blumenthal.

He said the rest of the tax cuts (or increases, depending on how you look at them), for non-middle-class families or "the rich" depending on how you look at it, would be subject to negotiation with congressional leaders.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein has a new Forbes column up about the election results:

The good news is that the incoming crowd could not repeat the blunders of the outgoing Congress even if it tried. Divided government counts gridlock as its greatest virtues. Even a long overdue political bed rest from the next round of Obama legislative mischief should provide a strong tonic for the economy....

This piece divides the publishing world up into "conservatives," "reformers," and "upstarts":

A useful heuristic test to determine the politics of publishers today is to drop the Wikipedia question. Do you like it? Do you use it? The Wikipedia is to discussions of digital media what abortion is to the American electorate, the topic on which there can be no compromise.

For a Conservative a reference to the Wikipedia is almost in bad taste, like a comment about Hillary Clinton's sex life or a passing acquaintance with the names of porn stars. The Wikipedia is so, well, so . . . unclean. It is what the world has come to, and that is not a good thing. It cannot be relied upon, no one knows who wrote it, and it is absolutely indiscriminate in what it chooses to cover.

The managing editor of the Manchester, Conn., Journal Inquirer, Chris Powell, explains:

"This election is about you!" read the front-page headline on the November edition of the newsletter of Connecticut Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union. "Your job! Your pension! Your future! Your benefits!" The newsletter's following page proclaimed the union's endorsement of the entire Democratic ticket.

How quaint of others to have thought that the election might be about the prosperity, health, and future of Connecticut generally.

Foley's lead seems unlikely to survive the Third World election systems of the urban Democratic bastions of Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven, which always report their vote hours after everyone else, perhaps just in case Democratic candidates need a few extra votes once the votes from all other municipalities are committed.

Author and former Obama auto tsar Steven Rattner has a letter to the editor in today's Wall Street Journal taking issue with Holman Jenkins's echo of New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell's pro-Richard Wagoner revisionism regarding General Motors. Mr. Rattner writes:

Ford faced exactly the same set of challenges that Mr. Wagoner blamed for GM's problems: the same United Auto Workers agreements, the same oscillating gasoline prices, the same credit crisis and the same competition from Asian manufacturers. Yet GM went bankrupt, requiring $50 billion of taxpayer money, while Ford remained solvent and needed no help from Washington. What was the difference? Management.

Michael Barone's thoughts on the election are available in two Washington Examiner article/posts, here and here.

The New York Times's Economic Scene columnist, David Leonhardt, writes, "Right now, the 400,000th dollar earned by a surgeon is taxed at the same 35 percent marginal rate as the four millionth dollar earned by a hedge-fund manager. This makes little sense, and it runs counter to how the tax code worked for much of the 20th century."

Some early thoughts after an evening spent watching election night coverage on television:

From Fox News (in a story that is also getting play on Bloomberg): "The Obama administration is mulling a strategy that would break apart the Bush tax cuts, according to sources familiar with the matter. The plan would call for a permanent extension of cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, and a temporary extension of cuts on income above that level. The proposed 'decoupling' of tax provisions would delay a decision on cuts for the so-called "rich" until next year or the year after, the sources said."

As a policy matter, I'm for treating everyone the same. But as a political matter, you'd think that today's losses for the Democrats would maybe make the Democrats reconsider whether it's such a great idea to make an election into a referendum on Democratic plans to raise taxes on the "rich."

Elitism isn't confined to the left, if today's Wall Street Journal column by Bret Stephens is any indication.

Here is the key sentence: "Pundits, particularly those who lean right, are schooled always to praise the wisdom of the electorate. Please. Only three years ago, Americans became acquainted with a junior U.S. senator with an interesting personal history, notable rhetorical gifts, programmatically liberal ideas and zero legislative accomplishments. Whereupon he was hailed as a saint and elected president."

This "are schooled" formulation is a classic journalist dodge of the passive voice. Who is doing the schooling? At the Wall Street Journal, the great teacher of journalists was the late, great editor Robert L. Bartley. His observation about the wisdom of the voters was core Bartley ideology, at least as it was transmitted to me by Seth Lipsky, and even at times firsthand by Bartley.

The crackdown on welfare spending has been the topic of several recent posts here. First New York proposed banning the use of food stamps to buy sugary drinks like soda. Then the Republican candidate for governor of Massachusetts complained that the Democrat was allowing state welfare recipients to use their electronic benefits cards to buy liquor, cigarettes, and lottery tickets. The latest development: Today's Los Angeles Times reports that Governor Schwarzenegger of California is joining the crackdown: "California welfare recipients will no longer be able to use their state-issued debit cards at medical marijuana shops, psychics, massage parlors and many other businesses whose services have been deemed 'inconsistent' with the goals of the program....The letter said the cards, which allow access to cash meant to help families pay rent and clothe their children, also will no longer work at bail bond establishments, bingo halls, gun shops, bars, race tracks, smoking shops, tattoo parlors and on cruise ships."