When the voters in Ohio put President Obama over the top last night, all that remained was to see the extent of his victory. As of now, the President won every state that he won in 2008, with the exception of Indiana and North Carolina; Florida's votes are being counted this morning. The President won the popular vote, which along with his decisive electoral vote win made the election an unambiguous victory. The polls that were so widely disparaged by the Rethugs turned out to be right (hat tip to the NYT's Nate Silver and Princeton Election Consortium for calling it right).
One of the great victories was the defeat of special interest money. The right wing plutocrats were convinced that the Citizens' United decision would ensure that the one percent could buy future elections with negative ads. They were wrong and lost huge sums of money. Another great victory was the decisive rejection of extreme tea bagger candidates and their reactionary views on women's' rights and their no-compromise stands. Will they learn a lesson? Zealots don't learn from experience, they make excuses, and they'll have many this time. Finally, this will be an election about changing demographics: the Latino vote went overwhelming to Obama, after the Rethug right doubled down on their bigoted "self-deportation" talk.
In defeat, Willard "Mittens" Romney can be consoled in the fact that when he returned to his more moderate instincts late in the campaign, voters responded positively. Sadly, he never had his "Sister Souljah" moment with the radical base of his party, where he could have said to them "no, that's not the right thing to do." He is due credit for a gracious concession speech, in which he asked for everyone to pray for the President and to work to bridge the divide; we'll see if his words motivate his party's base in any way to do that.
