This you already know

Pre-election coverage foregrounds and makes estimations. The pundit sits in the middle of a mass of cross-talk, intercepting, expounding and proliferating meanings within the discourse that flows between and among candidates and the audience. In this analysis, the audience is parsed, filtered, separated out into segments that each have their own traits and values that call for individualized treatment from the candidates.

Then, after the big night, post-election coverage sets about interpreting new, limited sets of meanings, and projects them into the near and distant future. This analysis diagnoses the population using the tools of cohesion and normalization. The segments of people are recognized as key segments, but their numbers add up to a whole.

All this coverage depicts a scene in which, prior to election day, the candidates' message descends and swirls down within the electorate. Post-election, the message is sent from below, up to the risers on which sit the podiums and punditry chairs.

Who is the pundit? Who is qualified to be a pundit? Generally, a pundit must be someone who either (1) practices journalism for a publication of certain status, (2) someone who previously held a high-ish public office, or (3) someone who attained some celebrity while incorporated in a political campaign or party. As currently used, the word "pundit" appears to be a term of soft derision that depersonalizes the speaker, and casts them as coincidentally filling a seat that could be filled by so many. To call someone a pundit is to say, "Take their words with a grain of salt". In effect, this can serve to disqualify them while situating them within a dysfunctional machine.

But we have different kinds of pundits who serve different functions. Some speak for voters and are allegiant to one side. Others attempt to refocus, summarize, and speak of political events, trends, and developments when prompted. And now there is an elite.

First in 2008 but more so in 2012, Nate Silver of 538 emerged from the pundit crowd. The left has endowed him with a version of the Author function. His predictions (which cannot account for the unpredictable) draw credibility both from his name and from the nameless science purportedly behind him. The author name means nothing on a scientific paper; but Silver's work has his name, and seems to live on the weight of his name and on the namelessness of his numbers.

Notes:

In the middle of his victory speech, Obama, in his general, high rhetorical way, espoused a a key principal and belief that undergirds whatever his political philosophy is:

America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our universities, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth. The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.