My first reaction as the numbers rolled in was that voters had conspired to play an elaborate practical joke on the country. After more than a year of frantic attention, obscene amounts of advertising, a profusion of polling, fact-checking, forecasting and analyzing, most of it predicated on the notion that America wanted change – “Big Change” as the closing Romney slogan had it – the electorate decided to basically leave things the way they were: President Obama in the White House, intransigent Republicans in charge of the House, Democrats barely in control of the Senate. After confiding to pollsters that they yearned for an end to gridlock, they reinstated the same traffic jam. Can this mean anything but four more years of acrimony and paralysis?

There are reasons to hope it can.

First, as Carl Hulse explained in The Times, last night’s outcome – the defeat of the Republican standard-bearer, the failed dream of taking the Senate – is bound to make Republicans in Congress question their strategy of obstruction and ideological purity. Certainly there will be Republicans who argue Romney failed by not being conservative enough. But there are Republicans (and I’ll bet John Boehner is one of them) who understand reality, and the reality is this: Romney surged when he moved toward the middle, and might have won if he had not veered so far right in his quest for the nomination, alienating women and Latinos in particular. The wiser heads will read their fate in the demographics (Republican support rests on a diminishing base of white men), in the repudiation Tuesday of Tea Party favorites in Indiana and Missouri and elsewhere, in the turning of the tide on gay rights, in the failure of Karl Rove’s SuperPAC cash to alter the balance of power, and in the electorate’s consistent plea to pollsters for compromise in Washington. The economy will be the first test of whether realism has seeped into the Republican consciousness, but there will be others. For example, after the burgeoning Latino vote went nearly 70 percent for Obama, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Marco Rubio rounding up Republicans for a deal on immigration reform.

Second, Obama knows his only route to the large legacy he craves leads through the more temperate Republicans, and he knows (as a man who voraciously consumes his press reviews) that winning votes requires something he has neglected, working the room. It requires old-fashioned schmoozing and flattery and favors, accompanied by high-minded appeals to the public. My colleague Tim Egan wrote a wonderful blog post yesterday explaining how Obama won the outspoken admiration of New Jersey’s acerbically Republican governor, Chris Christie, not just by delivering flood relief, but by brokering a meet between Governor Christie and his idol, Bruce Springsteen. I’m not sure what this says about Chris Christie, but it suggests Obama is getting some political game.

Third, if conciliatory outreach and a few rounds of golf with the majority leader fail, there is that “fiscal cliff.” I’ve proposed before that Obama make it perfectly clear: if the Republicans continue to play stall and sabotage, if they do not respond to genuine offers of a fiscal bargain, he is prepared to let the tax cuts expire and draconian spending cuts (including defense) kick in automatically at the beginning of the year. It would not take a lot of persuading for the public to blame Congress and – as Obama recently pointed out – voting is the best revenge. Let’s see how the Republicans, who have played their own game of chicken on the debt ceiling, respond when the president’s headlights are bearing down on them.

Is this too much to hope for?