Here are a few of the conclusions top tacticians are already drawing. | AP Photos Lessons learned from 2012

The 2012 election will be remembered by history for its smallness in a big, historic moment: The high drama of the first debate was a rare respite from months of petty rhetoric, egged on from start to finish by gobs of money from millionaires and billionaires.

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But for top leaders and strategists in both parties, the race has yielded immediate, tangible lessons that will shape the nation’s politics in the months and years ahead, regardless of who wins on Tuesday. Here are a few of the conclusions top tacticians are already drawing:

The GOP has a big-time Senate problem

The presidential race sucks up all the attention and rightly so. But the rise of anti-establishment power is killing Republican chances of winning control of the Senate. In two consecutive elections, the party had a clear shot at a majority and blew it — blew it because the party bosses in Washington have lost control over nominating contests in swing states and seem impotent in engineering the selection of the most electable candidates.

( Also on POLITICO: Latest polls from across the U.S.)

It’s mathematically possible for Republicans to pull out the majority — but it’s just as mathematically possible they don’t pick up a single seat. And a big reason has nothing to do with opportunity; it’s all about the candidates. Think about 2010: In Delaware, Republicans rejected a slam-dunk winner in former governor and Rep. Mike Castle for a candidate who bought an ad declaring she is not a witch. They nominated one of the few Republicans in Nevada who could not beat the wounded and unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The reason was simple: The tea party activists didn’t give a hoot what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and establishment Republicans thought about their nominees. They wanted ideological purists, not the same wishy-washy Republicans they blamed for runaway government, even under GOP control.

Now think about 2012. In Wisconsin, former Gov. Tommy Thompson might survive — narrowly, if he does. But the same forces that swept Gov. Scott Walker into office battered the once-popular Thompson in a brutal, expensive and damaging GOP primary. In Missouri and Indiana, two states that once seemed like sure-bet wins for Republicans, the party could now lose both because two old, white, Christian men thought it was fine to weigh in on why a woman who was raped need not have the legal right to an abortion. No one questions their faith or sincerity on the issue. But every Republican in Washington questions their political sanity.

( Also on POLITICO: 2012 swing-state map)

Republican operatives tell POLITICO that after the election, top officials plan to enlist some of the influential outside groups representing conservative grass-roots activists to see if they can help pre-empt the future selection of unelectable conservatives. The hitch: A lot of those groups couldn’t care less what the Wise Men of Washington want.

Democrats have a liberal problem

If President Barack Obama wins, he will be the popular choice of Hispanics, African-Americans, single women and highly educated urban whites. That’s what the polling has consistently shown in the final days of the campaign. It looks more likely than not that he will lose independents, and it’s possible he will get a lower percentage of white voters than George W. Bush got of Hispanic voters in 2000.

A broad mandate this is not.

The pressure on Obama to deliver for this liberal base will be powerful. Already, top left-wing groups are pressuring him not to buckle on a grand bargain that includes any entitlement cuts.

And if Obama wins, he will be dealing with a House Democratic Caucus more liberal than he is. The past four years have decimated the once-strong bloc of conservative Southern Democrats, leaving behind a caucus more liberal than ever. By POLITICO’s count, there will most likely be roughly 14 conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats in the next Congress, down from 50-plus only a few years ago.

Nancy Pelosi, who once predicted a possible Democratic takeover, is likely to find herself with small gains, if any. Pelosi might very well hang it up after the election, and if she does, there will be a big fight for party leader and a big test of whether a liberal caucus will let itself be led by a moderate, Steny Hoyer, who has waited patiently for years to take over but who might very well find himself challenged by the dominant liberal wing.

The Senate races offer the perfect cautionary tale to this impulse. Democrats have a good shot in Nebraska, Missouri, North Dakota, Virginia and Indiana because they have moderate Democratic candidates and incumbents who often see the president — and the party back in Washington — as out of tune with a center-right country.

All white, mostly male won’t cut it

Even if Mitt Romney wins, the Republican Party has, at most, one more election it can compete in without addressing its huge gap with Hispanics and women.

The demographic trends are brutal: With each passing election, the share of white voters shrinks, from 87 percent in 1992 to 83 percent in 1996 to 80 percent in 2000 to 77 percent in 2004 to 74 percent in 2008 and likely smaller this time around.

Romney, if anything, set Republicans back in their efforts to win over Hispanics. His rhetoric during the primaries — foolishly aimed at putting him to the right of Texas Gov. Rick Perry on the issue — was offensive to many Hispanics, especially first-generation voters. His absence of a plan for immigration reform until the bitter end did nothing to reverse the damage.

“If Romney loses,” said a top Republican operative, “it will be because he ran a 1992-style campaign that was aimed squarely at suburban white voters, while the president ran a campaign understanding the realities of a more diverse and far more polarized electorate. Demographic trends show we’re not far from Arizona becoming a swing state, and probably less than a generation away from Texas becoming a swing state.”

Republicans are in a box of their own making, after rejecting the advice of the George W. Bush crowd to find common ground on immigration reform. They desperately need a deal on this in the next four years so they can reconnect with a community that once was — and once again could be — open to an alliance on social and economic theology.

Obama, in seeking the endorsement of the editors of The Des Moines Register, made it clear how central the Latino vote is to his campaign. Speaking on a call that was later publicly released, he said: “Since this is off the record, I will just be very blunt. Should I win a second term, a big reason … is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. George Bush and Karl Rove were smart enough to understand the changing nature of America.”

Republicans’ gender gap with women was renewed by the regrettable comments about rape by the party’s Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana. But Romney created some of his own problems with an antiquated view of women, in the view of some Republican critics.

GOP operatives said this problem is much easier to fix than the deficit with Hispanics, starting with less strident rhetoric and — most importantly — getting serious about nominating more female candidates. “We can turn this around as quickly as 2014,” said one longtime Republican strategist. For instance, the strategist said, GOP candidates should talk less about spending and debt as a financial issue, and more in terms of the next generation. “Romney is a technocrat, and that’s how he talks about these issues,” the strategist said. “It’s very male.”

Speed kills

For those who hate long campaigns, get over it.

The combination of increased early voting and unlimited money in politics means longer campaigns and earlier attacks.

The Obama campaign heavily front-loaded its advertising, seeking to undermine Romney’s biggest credential — his track record as a businessman and turnaround artist. Obama officials contend this was a gamble, because they were unsure that they would also be able to afford heavy media buys in September and October. It turned out that they could afford to do both.

“The early-definition strategy came from expecting that we were going to ultimately be outspent by a great deal,” an Obama adviser said. “If we were going to get this contrast drawn, and the lines of the narrative drawn, we figured that money spent in May, June and July was going to be a lot more effective in getting that across to people, than waiting until September and October, when the debates and the conventions were dominating things.”

There’s nothing novel about defining an opponent before he or she defines themselves — but there is something novel about having essentially unlimited money to play hard earlier and late, and in between. Both parties now know they have that, at least until the courts step in and change the fundraising rules.

Precision matters, too

Win or lose, the Obama strategy in Ohio will be a case study in the politics of precision for years to come. They told us one year ago they would go nasty and narrow and couldn’t care less if people found the approach cold and calculating.

They pounded Romney early on his Bain record, to raise serious doubts about his job-creating credentials. And then they started dropping the auto-bailout bomb early, consistently and relentlessly.

They spent the vast majority of their resources targeting specific groups, but especially working-class whites in Ohio who benefited directly or indirectly from the auto bailout. As one top Obama official marveled, no one could have imagined when the president bailed out the auto industry it would not only work — but potentially win him the election.

Polls show Obama running even with working-class whites in Ohio — as much as 30 points higher than he is running in other swing states where the auto bailout is not the central focus of the campaign.

In a 50-50 nation, with technology making politics more precise by the year, this kind of micro-targeting is the new norm.

Romney has scrambled in the end to undo the auto-bailout damage.

Romney campaign sources tell us Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who was chosen as Romney’s sparring partner for mock debates and became a close and trusted adviser, argued for weeks that the campaign should take on the issue in Ohio, pointing out that Romney had proposed an alternative plan. Top Romney officials refused, insisting that voters focused on that issue had already been lost. But Portman argued many of them were working-class voters who were concerned about the direction of the country and that Romney should at least try to make the issue a wash with them.

It’s Hillary 2016

No name benefited more from the 2012 race than the Clintons.

This was the year the long, anguished restoration of Bill Clinton was officially complete. Obama went from tolerating Bill to wanting and ultimately needing him. It was Bill, not Barack, who stole the show at the Democratic convention, and it was Bill, not Barack, who starred in one of the most popular ads of the campaign season highlighting his convention speech. Bill Clinton went from feeling frozen out to feeling loved and essential, his friends say.

But this isn’t about Bill — it’s about Hillary. The secretary of state claims she won’t run in 2016, but those closest to her don’t buy it. And given that the favorable rating for each Clinton is in the 60-plus range, she might stroll into the Democratic nomination in 2016 if she wants it. Hillary Clinton will leave State soon, write a memoir and speak for a fee industry experts predict will exceed what George W. Bush gets on the circuit. The trick will be to stay prominent and central for the next four years without public office. But that never seems hard for the Clintons.

Ryan more powerful than ever (but for how long?)

Paul Ryan has already been told that if Romney wins, he will take the lead in the upcoming budget fights, which will be in his wheelhouse — spending, taxes and entitlements. He was put on the ticket for the sole purpose of using clout and credibility with House conservatives to help navigate the war over the fiscal cliff and the budget battles ahead. During the grand bargain talks of the past year, Speaker John Boehner would run every detail of the proposed plan by Ryan to get his blessing before sending any private signals to the president. The reason was simple: Even before he was the running mate, Ryan controlled more votes on budget matters than the leader of his own party.

If Romney loses, Ryan will take the fight from the campaign trail back to the House, where Boehner had made clear that Ryan could get a waiver from the six-year limit on chairmanships to run the Budget Committee again. That would make it Ryan vs. Obama on the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling and entitlement reform. Some Republicans close to Boehner worry that if Ryan did return, he would be so focused on 2016 that he would be inclined to kill any deal that takes his central interest and calling card off the table. One top Republican told us that if Ryan sticks around, the chances of a grand bargain would be lower.

There is a chance that Ryan would leave the House to make money and perhaps teach, setting the stage for a 2016 presidential run of his own. He clearly enjoyed the national stage and showed a natural ease on the stump. But he also showed his limitations, especially on foreign policy and other issues outside his comfort zone.

Ryan vs. Rubio, 2016

If Romney loses, Ryan won’t be the only young conservative instantly getting talked up as the future of the party. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — age 41, son of Cuban immigrants who became naturalized citizens, and increasingly referred to by his groupies as the party’s greatest communicator since Ronald Reagan — has a biography and aura tailor-made to mitigate Republicans’ demographic dilemmas. When he talks about Medicare, he invokes his mom. When he brings up immigration, he starts by reminding audiences that these are human beings, often seeking a better life for their families.

“Marco has the gift to open ears,” said a top Republican consultant. “He’s the kind of Republican who can break through to a cynical electorate.” Imagine if Rubio’s Florida goes Republican and Ryan’s Wisconsin does not.

Either way, Republicans walked away from the GOP convention wishing Rubio had a bigger role in it — and in the 2012 election. Republicans close to Rubio said it’s virtually certain he will make an unambiguous play to lead the party heading in 2016 if Romney-Ryan fall short. Until then, remember McConnell is up for reelection in 2014 and is likely certain to want Rubio’s blessing for cutting any major deals, especially on a grand bargain.