I’ve been chatting to Mark Mardell, the BBC’s North America Editor in Washington. Mark’s spent 2012 following the US Presidential Race. Now he’s focussing on Obama’s second term, and – most urgently – the prospect of the US falling off its own fiscal cliff. Here’s more from Mark on the outlook for the President: “The key to the next four years will be how Obama wants to establish his legacy, and whether that pins in place a certain sort of American future. He could try to go down as a compromiser – or he could play a more political angle and demonise republicans, aiming to take the house back in 2014 and push for greater change. Of course these are not mutually exclusive, in terms of tactics. I firmly believe he is in politics to bring something like social democracy to America. Republicans put this in more extravagant terms and see it as an existential undermining of what  America should be.”