Can Obama, Congress compromise on fiscal cliff?

>>> those problems on wall street , just some of the issues facing president obama on the heels of his reelection. chuck todd , nbc's political director and white house correspondent has more on the urgent matters on the president's plate. chuck, good morning.

>> good morning, matt. no rush for the campaign weary. the slew of deadlines at the end of the year, the biggest one to do with taxes. and it means this president and this congress have a lot of work to do right now, potentially a lot of compromising to get done, it's a political showdown that seems destined to get kind of ugly.

>> reporter: fresh off his wednesday morning's victory lap, it was deja vu all over again for the president. back to the decidedly less glamorous business of trying to navigate what is still a very polarized washington. hours before he landed back in d.c., the president who has insisted on tax increases for the rich spoke by phone to john boehner to begin talks on how to prevent the country's economy from going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

>> in order to garner republican support for new revenues, the president must be willing to reduce spending and shore up entitlement programs that are the primary drivers of our debt.

>> reporter: while mr. obama has hinted in the past he's willing to include social security and medicare in the fiscal negotiations, the rest of his party may not go along.

>> it's better to dance than to fight. it's better to work together. everything doesn't have to be a fight. everything doesn't have to be a fight. that's the way it's been the last couple of years.

>> reporter: meanwhile, romney's loss has prompted hang wringing and a blame game among republicans.

>> i think it's going to be a circular firing squad for the next six months in the republican party .

>> reporter: republicans lost by a wide margin among latinos, african-americans, asian americans , and women.

>> don't tell me the republican party doesn't have outreach, we do. but what are we supposed to do now? are we supposed to -- does that mean open the borders and embrace the illegals? if we're not getting the female vote, do we become pro-choice? do we start passing out birth control pills? is that what we have to do?

>> if the republican party were a business, you would say that they have a flawed business model for the future.

>> reporter: and are even a few republicans quietly pointing a finger at chris christie for praising the president's handling of the aftermath of hurricane sandy last week?

>> my activity with president obama was just another chapter in the leadership i've tried to show in this state, which is that people care more about getting things done than they care about partisanship. and i'm going to continue to conduct myself that way.

>> believe it or not, that sandy finger pointing is something that is being pushed around this idea among a lot of republicans, particularly close to the romney campaign. but i'll tell you, when you look at the entire scope of this election and the demographics, matt, it's a pretty absurd idea. this was almost exclusively about demographics.

>> chuck todd in washington, thank you very much.