The bad news is that Republicans probably won’t behave as if he’d been legitimately reelected. The nature of his victory would become a constant talking point. The right would be able to easily convince itself that it had won the great argument of the last four years and that Americans had validated Republican resistance to Obama, who’d been saved only by a technicality. The same pressure to oppose Obama on everything, always that has resulted in unprecedented obstruction by congressional Republicans would persist.

Of course, that obstruction will probably persist even if Obama wins the popular vote. If modern political history has taught us anything, it’s that the Republican base doesn’t believe any Democratic victory is legitimate, and always finds a way to treat a Democratic president as a usurper.

Nate Silver notes that certain analysts have theorized "that the storm could depress turnout along the Eastern Seaboard on Election Day itself." Since the storm is mostly hitting blue states, Sandy could "reduce Mr. Obama’s national popular vote without hurting his standing in the Electoral College much, potentially increasing the risk of a split outcome." But there is reason to be skeptical: