Not to be a wet blanket, but this sounds exactly like the kind of rhetoric the Democrats endured after the 2004 election:  party of the northeast, party of the parantheses.  And Kerry's 2004 map had the aesthetic appearance of a blue retreat to strongholds in cold, aquatic regions.

Obama had a great night, Democrats have had a great year, but there is absolutely nothing preventing 2010 from being a Republican blow out.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

And, yes.  This means that I will volunteer and contribute for Act Blue and Better Democrats, etc.

I was just reading about RFK, Jr. possibly being chosen to lead the EPA and it hit home.  We didn't just elect Obama and Biden last night, we swept the entire Bush cabal of incompetents from the government.  Starting in January our entire government and all its various agencies will be run by competent people who are qualified to run the agencies to which they have been assigned.

That's huge!

P.S.  Sorry about off-topic comment.

that they bash might band together to vote for the other guy/gal.

It's easy to tell them they just need to stick to a positive message, but they enjoy hating so much that I think they need a couple more disastrous election cycles to get the message.

I'm more worried about the Bloomberg types running third party aligning with Blue Dogs and intellectual conservatives.

I haven't studied that national exit poll fully, but the frustrating disconnect continues to be white women staying away from Democrats. This time it was 53-46 for McCain.

That shouldn't happen parallel to a Democrat winning by 6% nationally. Compare to previous cycles, a decade or so ago, when the white female percentage used to more or less mirror the national number. Clinton won that block handily. In 2000, Gore lost it to Bush, 49-48, in the coin flip popular vote. But after 9/11 we've seen betrayal by white women that hasn't reversed and this year was more pronounced than I expected. In 2006, we won the House national vote by about 7% while losing white women by 1%. That was promising, after Kerry lost white females by something like 11%.

The white male percentage has remained logical this decade. Yesterday Obama lost by 16%, 57-41. Gore trailed by 24, 60-36. Those more or less fall in line, since Obama fared about 6% better overall. But if we are going to sustain advantage in unfriendly cycles we need to find a way to reel in a segment of white females. Perhaps it was simply bigotry, rejection of Obama in certain areas. Hard to tell.

The good news, obviously, is the electorate has changed dramatically. I read that the white vote was 81% of the electorate in 2000, down to 72% this time. The Obama crew found a way to overcome a larger than expected deficit among white women and still win going away. A year ago I wouldn't have believed we could trail 53-46 in that group and win by more than 1 or 2%, let alone by 6%.

To me the big stories are first, how stongly Obama won in the Southwest - 12 pts in NV, 7 pts in CO, and an astonishing 15 pts in NM - helping lead the way to a blue sweep in the Land of Enchantment.  Demographics mean it will be hard for the Republicans to take these states away from strong Democratic candidates.  So we finally have a foothold in a group of states likely to gain rather than lose electoral votes.

Secondly, the fact that not only did he win all the Gore/Kerry states as I always believe he would, but that the closest was the 9 pt win in IA - all other Gore/Kerry states were double digits or better.  This alleves the concern that some of those Great Lakes states were subject to slip away.  VA was by a solid 5 pts, and NC turned blue a good two cycles sooner than anyone thought it would.

So yes, don't get complacent - things can change.  But with the totally adult way Obama is likely to run his administration. I am confident we'll have a good shot at consolidating these positions in 2010 and 2012, thus truly regionalizing the Republican party.  As Ed Rollins said to day, as a 60 something white man he IS the face of the party.

McCain also carried the farm belt, at least part of it, and a few of the Rocky Mountain states. We need to work on that.

Before we can tell the Duke Boys to go jump in the lake 'cause we don't need them, we need to ad a Solid Farm Belt to the Solid Northeast and Solid Pacific. Nail down Missouri and those prairie states. We made some progress this year--North Dakota was closer than it has ever been--but let's keep trying.

I am very concerned about prop 8 in CA. it couldn't even pass with Obama's mammoth win there, 60-37 against John McCain. Ladies and Gents, this is what the GOP is gonna use in 2010. Be prepared. The GOP lost big because of Bush. America is still not quite left yet. We will need to counter with immigration, as the Latinos delivered for Obama. With him, clearly the white vote isn't going anywhere for us. Cuba is another place Obama can work on, especially now that Fidel is out of the way, and Raul is headed out.

About white women, we need to work on this. Sarah Palin is not gonna go away. I'm convinced she helped keep McCain alive, for all her bad press. She kept somewhat of an already demoralized GOP base. In 1992, people were writing the GOP's death notices. Turned out they were merely buried alive, and escaped the coffin.

...even if that means welcoming those that don't agree with the party base on each and every issue.

I have watched the Democratic Party wrestle mightily with this issue this year.  Even within the party of Tolerance it is easy to polarize over issues.  The key to running a team is to find common ground and build the base on that, not to focus on hot-button issues replete with claxons and clarion bells no matter how exciting those are.

The GOP should relocate its center around actual conservative issues - more personal responsibility and freedom, small government and fiscal conservatism - rather than run to the side of the barge and focus on Christian fundamentalism issues which can by definition only apply to a subset of potential members.

The Democratic Party (we really need a TLA for that...) needs to fully understand Obama's message and continue to relocate its center around social equality and global responsibility.

If that happens then we will have the best of all possible scenarios.  Two parties with arguably good approaches to achieving the same goal - harmony and prosperity - and they could battle it out over the best means and methods for a given time and place.

Having been born in Texas and lived there for much of my life all I have to say is "GOD, why to we have to be lumped together with these basketcase RED states of the South and the plains states". I hate that. Its like our populace has to be 1st in National Football rankings and dead last in influence in US politics. This election we got little national traction--we re-elected a whole bunch of low seniority Republican Congressional  members. The Houston area at one time had many high ranking House committee chairpersons. Then about 1990 we went through the Republican transformation and threwout several ranking Democrat members. The highest ranking Republican is House member John Culberson who is ranked about 300 in seniority. This is disgusting for the 4th largest city in the USA to have no political clout in the Congress just because we "wanted to show those elitist liberals" a thing or two. Yeah, right--we join such basketcase POWERHOUSE types as Oklahomans, Alabamans, Kansasans, Mississippians, etc. who live mostly on Federal farm subsidies and other types of welfare.