"That Happened!" by Rachel Maddow

That happened! That really happened. We are not going to have a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe versus Wade. There will be no more Antonin Scalias and Samuel Alitos added to this court.

We`re not going to repeal health reform. Nobody is going to kill Medicare and make old people in this generation or any other generation fight it out on the open market to try to get themselves health insurance.
We are not going to do that.

We are not going to give a 20 percent tax cut to millionaires and billionaires and expect programs like food stamps and kid`s insurance to cover the cost of that tax cut.
We`re not make you clear it with your boss if you want to get birth control under the insurance plan that you`re on.

We are not going to redefine rape.

We are not going to amend the United States Constitution to stop gay
people from getting married.

We are not going to double Guantanamo.

We are not eliminating the Department of Energy or the Department of
Education or housing at the federal level.

We are not going to spend $2 trillion on the military that the
military does not want. We are not scaling back on student loans, because
the country`s new plan is that you should borrow money from your parents.
We are not vetoing the DREAM Act. We are not self-deporting. We are
not letting Detroit go bankrupt.

We are not starting a trade war with China on Inauguration Day in January.
 We are not going to have, as a president, a man who once led a mob of friends to run down a scared, gay kid, to hold him down and forcibly cut his hair off with a pair of scissors while that kid cried and screamed for help and there was no apology, not ever.

We are not going to have a Secretary of State John Bolton.
We are not bringing Dick Cheney back.
We are not going to have a foreign policy shop stocked with architects of the Iraq war. We are not going to do it.
We had the chance to do that if we wanted to do that, as a country.
And we said no, last night, loudly.

Now, to be fair:  If you are a conservative or if you are rooting for
the Republicans, a few things did go your way.
Republicans did not lose that Senate seat that they might have lost in
Arizona. Jon Kyl`s old Senate seat goes to another Republican, to Jeff Flake.
Also, Republicans did not lose that other Senate seat they might have
lost in Nevada, the old John Ensign seat that was given to Dean Heller.
It stays with him. It stays Republican just barely.

And while President Obama carried 28 states last time, he carried 25
or 26 states this time, depending on how Florida goes. That means
Republicans did lose everything else, but they got back Indiana and also
North Carolina.

So it was not a totally hopeless night for Republicans.

Big picture in the House, thanks mostly to redistricting the
Republicans were not in danger of losing the House, and they didn`t, even though the Republican majority appears to have shrunk there.


Republican Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts lost by a lot to the nation`s foremost authority on the economic rights of the middle class.

After marriage rights for same-sex couples were voted down in state
after state after state for years, more than 30 times in a row, this year,
all change in Maine, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it.
In Maryland, they voted on marriage equality and they voted for it.
In Minnesota, they were asked to vote against marriage equality, and
Minnesota refused to ban it.
In Washington state, the vote is not called yet. They are still counting the vote and we will be watching it closely, but if you are on the pro-gay right side in Washington state, it should be noted that it is looking pretty good.

Nevada elects its first African-American congressman this year.

America gets our first openly gay United States senator.

America gets our first-ever Asian American woman senator from Hawaii.

Her seat in the House, I should note, gets filled by this woman, a
Democratic Iraq war veteran. I`m going to tell you right now that her name
is Tulsi Gabbard, because she is on the fast track to being very famous
some day. Tulsi Gabbard.

Speaking of Iraq war veterans, Tammy Duckworth, veteran helicopter
pilot, she lost both her legs in Iraq. She is going to Congress and she is
sending home the opponent who mocked her for her war record, Joe Walsh.
California relaxed its "three strikes you`re out" law and rejected a
law to cripple the power of unions.

Decriminalization of marijuana was approved in Washington and in
Colorado.

The astonishing tide of dark money spent against Democratic Senators
Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio turned out to be pointless.
Both those Democratic senators won, they held on to their seats.
Democrats won a Senate seat in North Dakota, of all places, a seat
that nobody thought they could win.

All of these states that had this hugely aggressive total Republican
takeover from the 2010 elections, Ohio and Wisconsin, and Michigan, and
Pennsylvania and Virginia and Florida, all of those states that went so red
in state government in these past couple of years and that then had these
big fights inside their states over how Republicans were governing there.
In Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and we will see about
Florida, last night not only did Republicans lose the presidential election
in every single one of those states, Republicans lost the Senate race in
every single one of those states too -- Sherrod Brown, Tammy Baldwin,
Debbie Stabenow, Bob Casey, Tim Kaine, Bill Nelson. Depending on Florida,
a Democratic sweep of the presidency, and definitely a Democratic sweep of
the Senate race -- in those states that the GOP was so excited to have
supposedly turned red in a way that was going to stick.

Last night, Democratic women swept every major office in New
Hampshire. Last night, California Democrats won Democratic super majority
in the state House and in the state Senate. Not just majorities in
California, but super majorities. Wherein, if the Republicans don`t turn
up, any of them, any day at work, nothing will be different in California.
They`re completely legislatively irrelevant.

Allen West lost a seat.

More women got elected to the U.S. Senate than at any time in U.S.
history.

The Republican presidential nominee and vice presidential nominee both
lost their home states.

Missouri and Montana and West Virginia chose Democratic governors.
West Virginia chose its first gay state legislature. So did North Dakota.
West Virginia and North Dakota? Yes, seriously.

Joe Lieberman`s old seat went to a real Democrat in Connecticut.

The proportion of young people voting compared to 2008, it went up,
same with African-Americans, up from 2008. Same with Latinos, up from
2008, not down, up.

If you are a liberal or if you are rooting for the Democrats, last
night was a very, very, very big night.

And, oh, yes, this happened. President Barack Obama, yes, will go
down in history as our nation`s first African-American president. But he
will also go down in history as the most successful Democratic presidential
candidate since FDR.

President Clinton got re-elected too, I know, but only Barack Obama
got re-elected with not just big Electoral College margins, but also with
majority wins in the popular vote, twice.

The guy who predicted this outcome, almost exactly, is Nate Silver, of
course, who writes the political statistics blog, "FiveThirtyEight" at "The
New York Times." For accurately predicting, it appears, the exact outcome
of the race, and I mean down to every single state. We`ll see about
Florida, Nate was, of course, pilloried, pilloried on the right and by
right-leaning beltway media types, including Politico., for having the
audacity to print what his poll averages told him was about to happen.
But Nate was right, the polls were right, even without Florida being
decided, we now know that President Obama won in pretty much exactly the
way the state-by-state polls said he was going to win. He won with more
than 300 electoral votes. It was not magic, it was just math. Math that
was completely invisible to the political right.

Letterman: "Good Call, Dick Morris"

Hilarious.

Election Results 2012

Now that a couple of days have gone by and the exhilaration has partially subsided, and I've had time to pore over the results, here are some of the highlights:

Oh, wait a second.

PRESIDENT OBAMA WON! Whoo-hoo! He got his second term just as predicted, with well over 300 electoral votes!  And once Florida figures out how to count and its 29 electoral votes are added, the President will have a total of 332!  WOW! Another landslide! And that Regressive republican, lying, flip flopping, two faced, duplicitous, self-serving, robotic empty suit lost! WHOO-HOOOOOOOO!!!

Okay, now the exhilaration has subsided. For real. On with the results before another wave washes over me.

But before we get to the results, a word about Florida. Once again, the country shakes its collective head in disbelief at the idiots who run the only state that can't seem to accomplish an election on time like the rest of the country. We're like a third world nation. Soon we'll need UN observers to oversee our elections.

This is nothing more than counting, folks. It's what you learn in first grade. Do we need to bring back that bald geek with the giant bulging eyeballs who stared at the "hanging chads" back in 2000?

Once again, Florida was the state with the longest lines, the most chaos at the voting locations, and the only state that still hasn't figured out how to finish counting them. We need to get rid of the incompetents starting with the Regressive governor, who cut the number of early voting days in half and refused, when asked by the League of Women Voters and other groups, to add an extra day or two before election day.  And we need to rid ourselves of the Regressives in the House and Senate. They're getting paid for a job they can't do. Time for a pink slip.

Gone.

Now the good news: America said goodbye to many of the far rightwing fringe Teabaggers who were voted into power in 2010, like Angry Allen West.

Disgraced Col. Allen West of Florida has lost his congressional seat but is refusing to admit defeat and accept the fact that the voters booted him out. This is the guy who once said most of the Democrats in Congress were Communists. This is the guy who called Debbie Wasserman Schultz "vile". This is the guy whose irresponsible and violent actions in the military caused him to be relieved of his command, charged with three counts of aggravated assault  and fined $5,000. His military career was over, and he was allowed to retire the next year.

Goodbye Todd Akin, who made up the bizarre term, "legitimate rape."  He claimed a woman can't possibly get pregnant from rape because her body will magically "shut the whole thing down."

Goodbye Richard Mourdock, who said, "pregnancy resulting from rape is a gift from god; part of god's will."

Goodbye Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh, who openly mocked double amputee, American hero and veteran, Tammy Duckworth.

HELLO Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat from Wisconsin, and first openly gay US Senator! She beat far rightwinger Tommy Thompson for a seat in the US Senate.

HELLO Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts!

and WELCOME BACK Alan Grayson, temporarily out of the US House as a Democratic Representative from Florida, replaced for 2 years by a far rightwing Teabagger, who was just voted back in by a 2-1 margin.

And my US Representative, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is also the Chair of the DNC, beat Karen Harrington (R) -- her perennial challenger who never seems to learn that we don't want her -- by a 2-1 margin.

Bottom line is President Barack Obama won re-election with about 100 more electoral votes than Willard Romney received -- and that number will rise further when Florida's 29 points are added to the score. And the Democrats picked up seats in the House as well as the Senate.

FOUR states voted in favor of marriage equality: Washington state, Maine, Minn, and Maryland.

Americans sent a loud message: We will not accept  the rightwing's race-baiting tactics, the despicable, constant lying, voter suppression and false narratives of a "lack of enthusiasm" on the part of Democrats and Obama supporters.  Make it more difficult and we show up in HUGE numbers.

The Regressive republicans' disaster from this past Tuesday has led to on-air meltdowns and temper tantrums from Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, The Quitter from Wasilla, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Karl Rove, who, in Right Wing World, is somehow allowed run one of the biggest political PACS while simultaneously acting as a "Fox contributor and analyst", sitting on their set and offering "analysis."

The tape of Karl's shock and disbelief at President Obama's re-election is now legendary, having been played on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and run endlessly on all of msnbc's shows. I myself have gleefully rewound and watched it countless times!

This stems from all of Fox's mouthpieces refusing to accept the results of every political poll for the last couple of months. They live in their own world, separate from reality. All polls have shown that in almost every swing state, President Obama led Willard by several points. The rightwing mouthpieces have spent these last couple of months talking themselves into believing that every poll in the country was wrong and that Willard would not only win, but would win big -- taking almost every swing state by storm.

And then reality came along and hit them in the face like a snowball you didn't see coming.

The clip below shows Karl in denial so classic that it will be shown in psychology classes for decades to come. The rightwing echo chamber has so talked itself into its own set of "facts" that reality just couldn't possibly be true! And thus the meltdown, where Karl insisted that Obama hadn't won.  If we could just wait for more results to come in, why, Willard would be the winner and Karl would be vindicated! He even sent one of their blonde reporters down to the Room of Political Geeks to find out why they had pronounced "the wrong guy" as the winner. She dutifully walks off the set down to the Geek Room and is told that the stats show Obama won. And they say they're "99.95% sure of the results"! Further, most of the votes that had yet to be counted would come from highly Democratic precincts.

 It was hilarious. Watch Rove steadfastly refuse to believe what his own network  -- as well as every other network -- has projected.  And he does it while the Chyron graphic under his fat face exclaims,  "BARACK OBAMA RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT."

Priceless.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rove wouldn't accept reality because he spent about $400,000,000 of his rich donors' money and got nothing for it. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson also spent hundreds of millions in the Regressive republicans' primary and then spent more on Willard's campaign and got nothing in return.  Think these nice folks are furious right about now? LOL

This is a good thing. It shows that despite the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling -- allowing unlimited funds to a candidate's political PAC by any unnamed entity, foreign or domestic -- the voters cannot be bought.  And they weren't.

Now, the Regressive republican party has a big problem. Their base -- angry middle aged white men -- is a diminishing demographic.  Unless they reach out to women, gays, blacks and hispanics, they will continue on the road to extinction.  And that doesn't mean trotting out Condoleezza Rice at another convention, as if to say, "See?  We have 'one of them,' too!" It means coming up with legislation that will actually benefit those groups.

The problem is if they reach out to women, gays, blacks and hispanics, they will lose their base of angry old christian white men, because that base just happens to hate all those groups.

And now we Liberals can sit back and watch the Republican Civil War begin.  I can tell you right now, they don't get it. They never will. Their mouthpieces have already spent the last few days screaming about -- and blaming -- Hurricane Sandy, Chris Christie (for complimenting the President's quick, effective response to the hurricane), Candy Crowley, fact checkers, the media, and the polls. But they won't blame themselves, their attitudes, or their regressive legislation.

Alec Baldwin summed it up perfectly with a humorous tweet:  You know your party's in trouble when someone asks, "how'd the rape guy do?" And you answer, "which one?"

UPDATE:

President Obama has won the state of Florida, bringing his Electoral College tally up to 332.  Willard Romney ended up with 206.

President Obama addresses his staff.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy