…President Obama, while peppered with tough questions about the issue, got an hour on national TV to make the case that he can be trusted to reform the health-care system. Remember, it’s not about winning the debate on whether his way is RIGHT; it’s about securing the TRUST of skeptical Americans that he’ll take their concerns and go about this with care. And on that score, this is where we probably get why so many of the president’s opponents were upset. This format was in the president’s wheelhouse. Whether you agree with him or not, it’s obvious he has a deep grasp of the issue, and no doubt he only helped his cause. Of course, we don’t yet know how many folks watched. But the perception that he got into the details most likely is only a help to him, even if those details become unpopular. By the way, it doesn’t appear the president committed any news, though some noted that he continued to leave open the door for supporting a tax on some health-care benefits. Also health care remains in today’s news as liberals and progressives rally for reform on Capitol Hill at 11:30 am ET.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.”

- Henry Ford

“Obama’s unprecedented online success guarantees that there’s not a single campaign in 2012, Democratic or Republican, that won’t place the Web at the core of its operation. The floodgates are open. This doesn’t mean just hiring Web developers, bloggers, videographers — the works. It also means using the Internet to invite people into the process, giving them something to work for, offering them a stake in victory or defeat. More than any other medium in our history, the Web is by the people, for the people. Starting with Howard Dean, continuing with Obama and stretching out into the future, this new dynamic will transform the way campaigns are run — and, beyond that, the way the winning candidate governs. Fundamentally, all of this is redefining our relationship with our politics.”

President-elect Obama continues to show he's no dummy — and no moderate — with his sharp picks for the White House communications team:

• Robert Gibbs, an Obama campaign spokesman, will be press secretary
• Ellen Moran, EMILY's List executive director, will be communications director
• Dan Pfeiffer named Obama's deputy communications director

If General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go
overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With
it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check.

In The Boston Globe, a former Romney communications advisor lements the decline of traditional media and pleads with online media to more closely adhere to a journalistic “code of ethics.”

“Where are the online gatekeepers? Gatekeeping is the most important function for the offline media. Editors decide which stories get published. They make sure rumors aren’t printed. Sensitive information is double- and sometimes triple-sourced. Gatekeeping serves an important purpose in establishing the ethics of journalism. Sadly, it doesn’t exist on the Web.”

Unfortunately for traditional PR and communications people, that horse has left the barn.

From the Wall Street Journal:

“Key pieces of the longstanding Republican coalition of economic and social conservatives, culture-war soldiers and national-security hawks showed severe stress fractures during the long election, and leaders from different wings are now vying for party leadership.”

The answer to the old joke is “in the mirror,” of course.

Soaking in the final seconds of what may be an Obama win, the liberal writers at the New York Times are hyperventilating with anxiety. And since they can’t express it in the first person, they turn to New Yorkers to express their anxiety for them. Their piece also offers a little editorial perspective on how liberals view the media:

“Many liberal Democrats watch MSNBC, but some say it sounds too much like comfort food. CNN serves its election coverage with a stiff little chaser of doubt for Democrats, and many liberals say CNN and NPR are their regular evening companions. If they really want to rub the sore tooth of worry, they dial over to the ‘Obama’s radical friend Bill Ayers’ channel, otherwise known as Fox News.

“‘Mostly I flip between CNN and MSNBC, but I go to Fox if I want to get enraged,’ Mr. Downs said.”