On Election Day morning, Charlie Sykes predicted:

Whatever happens at the presidential level, conservatives in Wisconsin will be still be ascendant after today election: Scott Walker will still be governor and Republicans will have strong — maybe even stronger — majorities in both the Assembly and the Senate, ensuring continuing support for his agenda. …

In 2010, no state switched as decisively from Blue to Red as Wisconsin. Before the 2010 election, Democrats controlled the governorship, both houses of the Legislature and all the levers of power in state government. After that election, they controlled none. As a result, Walker was able to advance one of the boldest agendas of any governor in the country.

And on Wednesday — after two years of turmoil, protests and recall elections —  he will be positioned to move ahead aggressively. …

In other words, Wisconsin will continue to be ground zero in the conservative revolution.

The biggest reason, irrespective of the votes for Assembly or Senate, is that Wisconsin has the most powerful governor in the nation, thanks to the governor’s veto power. If Walker doesn’t want something to happen, it isn’t going to happen.

Tucker Carlson has another prediction independent of the presidential race:

… we already know the loser in this election cycle: political reporters. They’ve disgraced themselves. Conservatives have long complained about liberal bias in the media, and with some justification. But it has finally reached the tipping point. Not in our lifetimes have so many in the press dropped the pretense of objectivity in order to help a political candidate. The media are rooting for Barack Obama. They’re not hiding it. …

Remember his last press conference? On August 20, the president made a rare appearance in the White House briefing room. (Obama has held fewer press conferences even than George W. Bush.) The first question went to Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press. Here’s what Kuhnhenn asked, in full and unedited:

“Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you for being here. You’re no doubt aware of the comments that the Missouri Senate candidate, Republican Todd Akin, made on rape and abortion. I wondered if you think those views represent the views of the Republican Party in general. They’ve been denounced by your own rival and other Republicans. Are they an outlier or are they representative?”

In other words: Just how horrible are your opponents? That’s not a question. That’s an assist.

Most telling of all, nobody in the press corps seemed to find Kuhnhenn’s suck-up remarkable, much less objectionable. Reporters who push Obama for actual answers, meanwhile, find themselves scorned by their peers — as we discovered the hard way when our White House reporter dared ask Obama an unapproved question during a presidential statement in the Rose Garden. Months later, longtime Newsweek correspondent Jonathan Alter confronted us on the street and became apoplectic, literally yelling and shaking and drawing a crowd, over the exchange. His complaint: our reporter was “rude” to Obama. …

The point is that many in the press are every bit as corrupt as conservatives have accused them of being. The good news is, it’s almost over. The broadcast networks, the big daily newspapers, the newsweeklies — they’re done. It’s only a matter of time, and everyone who works there knows it. That may be why so many of them seem tapped out, lazy and enervated, unwilling to stray from the same tired story lines. Some days they seem engaged only on Twitter, where they spend hours preening for one another and sneering at outsiders.

By the next presidential cycle most of these people will be gone. They’ll have moved on to academia or think tanks or Democratic senate campaigns, or wherever aging hacks go when their union contracts finally, inevitably get voided. They’ll be replaced by a vibrant digital marketplace filled with hungry young reporters who care more about breaking stories than maintaining access to some politician or regulator.

I wrote in this space earlier that any reporter who sucks up to politicians, regardless of party, is committing journalistic malpractice. ABC-TV’s Sam Donaldson didn’t suck up to Ronald Reagan. CBS-TV’s Dan Rather didn’t suck up to Richard Nixon. I assume reporters didn’t suck up to Lyndon Johnson. The era of reporters massaging politicians was supposed to end with Watergate.

Investors Business Daily isn’t massaging Obama:

On issue after issue, in fact, the media haven’t covered Obama as much as they’ve covered up for him, whether it’s the dismal state of the economy, the failure of his policies or the increased troubles abroad. …

But whoever wins the White House, the fact remains that the country faces huge problems that must be addressed. And after the election, the press is sure to churn out what can charitably be called “now they tell us” stories about these matters, once any potential election impact has passed. …

Among other stories the media are likely to “discover” after the election is over:

• The economy really does stink. The press studiously ignored the ongoing economic catastrophe under Obama, while parading any “green shoot” they could find that suggested growth was around the corner.

Don’t be surprised if, after the election, they start to notice that three years of subpar growth have left the middle class further behind and more mired in poverty, and created a vast pool of long-term unemployed.

• Massive debt and entitlement crises loom. Despite four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits and a national debt that now exceeds total GDP, the media largely treated the debt crisis with a collective yawn.

Ditto the looming bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security. These crises are nevertheless real and will have to be dealt with soon, a fact the press will almost certainly acknowledge after Nov. 6.

• The debt ceiling limit is fast approaching. Another story that went largely unremarked this campaign is the fact that the country is approaching the new debt ceiling limit. The Treasury Dept. warned last week that it expects the government to reach its borrowing limit before the end of the year.

Congress and the White House will have to deal with that just as they’re trying to avoid the fiscal cliff.

• ObamaCare isn’t what it was cracked up to be. After two years of ignoring health reform’s fundamental flaws, the press will likely admit that ObamaCare is fundamentally flawed.

Reports are sure to appear pointing out the law’s lack of cost controls, its adverse impact on doctors and hospitals, and the fact that, after spending $1.76 trillion, it will still leave 30 million uninsured.

• Obama’s deficit-cutting plan won’t work. The press let the president get away with one of the biggest whoppers yet — that his tax hikes on “the rich” would be enough to pay for his spending binge and bring down the deficit $4 trillion.

Obama’s own budget proved this wasn’t the case. And after the election, you can bet the media will be “shocked” to find that his numbers didn’t add up.

• Questions about Benghazi still demand answers. After almost two full months spent burying the Benghazi story, expect the mainstream press to wake up and notice that, as the Washington Post admitted in an editorial last Friday, “a host of unanswered questions” remains.

Michael Barone adds:

The culturally cohesive America of the 1950s that some of us remember, usually glossing over racial segregation and the civil rights movement, is no longer with us and hasn’t been for some time.

That was an America of universal media, in which everyone watched one of three similar TV channels and newscasts every night. Radio, 1930s and 1940s movies, and 1950s and early 1960s television painted a reasonably true picture of what was typically American.

That’s not the America we live in now. Niche media have replaced universal media.

One America listens to Rush Limbaugh; the other to NPR. Each America has its favorite cable news channel. As for entertainment, Americans have 100-plus cable channels to choose from, and the Internet provides many more options. …

We’re more affluent than we were in the 1950s (if you don’t think so, try doing without your air conditioning, microwaves, smartphones and Internet connections). And we have used this affluence to seal ourselves off in the America of our choosing while trying to ignore the other America.

We tend to choose the America that is culturally congenial. Most people in the San Francisco Bay area wouldn’t consider living in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, even for much better money. Most Metroplexers would never relocate to the Bay Area.

There are plenty of smart and creative and successful people in both Americas. But they don’t like to mix with each other these days. …

They especially don’t like to talk about politics and the cultural issues that, despite the prominence of economic concerns today, have largely determined our political allegiances over the last two decades.

One America tends to be traditionally religious, personally charitable, appreciative of entrepreneurs and suspicious of government. The other tends to be secular or only mildly religious, less charitable on average, skeptical of business and supportive of government as an instrument to advance liberal causes. …

Ronald Reagan, speaking the language of the old, universal popular culture, could appeal to both Americas. His successors, not so much. Barack Obama, after an auspicious start, has failed to do so.

As a result, there are going to be many Americans profoundly unhappy with the result of this election, whichever way it goes. Those on the losing side will be especially angry with those whose candidate won.

Americans have faced this before. This has been a culturally diverse land from its colonial beginnings. The mid-20th century cultural cohesiveness was the exception, not the rule. …