Anybody want a used Tea Party?

538 blogger Nate Silver.

I received a comment this morning:

This is probably not the right spot for this comment, but I want to thank Fred for keeping everyone informed regarding HJRCA49. I am sure that the continuous information supplied by this blog was instrumental in defeating this self-serving change to the Illinois Constitution. Thanks to the postings in this blog, both active and retired employees will continue to have their pensions protected by the Constitution, which is a major benefit in light of the possible legislation which is due to be voted on shortly.

– Richc46

I don’t know about how instrumental I was. A lot of public employees contacted a lot of their friends. Bloggers like John Dillon, Glen Brown and Tim Furman spent a lot of time blogging on the issue of public employee pensions. So we were able to keep Mike Madigan from getting his 60% vote on the Constitutional Amendment that would undermine the pension protection clause.

That was a little-noticed, big win last night.

And yes. Obama was a big win last night. It was good to see the neo-fascists of the Republican Party get their heads handed to them on a platter. They had banked on people staying home. They banked on voter suppression. Of photo ID intimidation and long lines. Karl Rove’s billions bought bupkis. None of it worked. Obama was the first Democratic incumbent to get more than 50% of the vote since FDR.

Latino vote was significantly up. African-American vote matched 2008. The youth vote exceeded 2008.

On the social networks, voting became the operative word. Notions that somehow teachers would abandon Obama and the Democrats even though the Democratic Party’s education program sucks, proved as false as the other predictions of stay-at-home voters. Everybody came back.

Aside from Nate Silver, the other big winner last night was my son-in-law who won the family electoral vote pool.

But there were other winners as well.

Winner: Chicagoans. Those that had a chance because the issue was on their ballot in their precinct voted around 90% for an elected school board. Loser: Rahm Emanuel.

Winner: Michael Madigan. He won a veto-proof Illinois General Assembly. Lots of losers in this one: Illinois Republicans. Governor Quinn. Independent Democrats. Possibly Rahm, since how many bosses does there get to be? Public employees, if we don’t get our stuff together to defend our pensions in the coming General Assembly session.

Madigan was instrumental in the redrawn Illinois congressional districts that produced Democratic Party victories for Tammy Duckworth, Bill Foster and Brad Schneider. They owe him.

Winner: Tammy Baldwin. She will be the first open lesbian in the US Senate.

Winner: While Clair McCaskill is not exactly a progressive Democrat, Todd Akin’s weird gender fantasies got a well-deserved repudiation.

Winners: Maryland, Maine and Washington all voted to allow same-sex marriages. It is the first time the issue has been approved by popular vote.

A big loss was in Michigan where Proposition 2 went down to defeat. It would have restored collective bargaining rights to the Michigan constitution.

Winner: Bernie Sanders gets to go back to the US Senate. A rare humane voice among the cretins.

The TV and cable analysis last night was insufferable.

The non-stop bloviating by those like NBC’s David Gregory made me hit the mute button more than once.

The argument that somehow the Republicans can turn off the Tea Party and become more big-tent and bipartisan is crazy. The Tea Party racists aren’t going to change their spots. This may have been the last chance for the Republicans to win on the national level. I can’t see how they can survive four more years. In Illinois, they have become nearly invisible.

These same pundits are calling on Obama to also be more bipartisan. As if he had been some crazed leftist these past four years. It will be hard for progressives to cause a ruckus in the Democratic Party. But that’s just what needs to be done. It drives me crazy that the unions provided thousands of GOTV foot soldiers and spent millions of dollars but got nothing in return.

And asked for nothing in return.

Argh!

Obama’s midnight victory speech thanked everyone but those that got him there: African-American voters. Latino voters. Women voters. Union voters.

So, several billion dollars and a year and a half later. Some things got settled. Lots of things didn’t get settled.

I had this image of Karl Rove screaming at Romney after NBC first declared Ohio for Obama. “I just raised $2 billion for you, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. You can’t concede now.”

His billionaire hedge-fund and Wall Street backers will still write checks. But they have to wonder whether it is a good idea to give them to Karl Rove.

No doubt there will be some new huckster to hand them to.

The good news is that yesterday’s results have provided some open space to fight some more.

I’m hyped and ready.