* Obama won. I wasn't surprised or too nervous. It played out pretty much as I thought it would, although I gave Virginia and Florida to Romney. (VA went Obama; FL is still undecided, but probably Obama)
* Obamacare is preserved. The things that haven't taken effect, WILL take effect… and no lawmaker can strike it down.
* UPDATE: Oh, and the Supreme Court. My God. With as many as three justices possibly leaving, this Obama victory is HUGE!
* Dems retain hold of the Senate, but more importantly, a progressive champion has been sent to the Upper Chamber in the person of Elizabeth Warren. The first openly gay Senator — Tammy Baldwin, another solid liberal — joins her. The Dem majority will be more progressive and energetic.
* Maine, Maryland and Minnesota all supported same-sex marriages. Maine and Maryland actually permit it; Minnesota squashed an attempt to ban it (something NC failed to do this year). UPDATE: Washington joins Maine and Maryland.
* Women power: there will be at least 19 female senators, the most ever. In my home state of New Hampshire, every senator and member of the House being sent to Washington DC is now a woman, as is the the state's new governor.
* Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin went down, as did Richard "Babies From Rapists Are A Gift From God" Mourdock. They weren't the only ones who suffered for their rape-related comments and views.
* Tea Party candidates struggled — including my favorite Michelle Bachmann (she barely won re-election, but she won). Same with Allen West of Florida, another leader of the Tea Party caucus, and Representative Frank Guinta, Republican of New Hampshire (UPDATE: OOoooh — Allen West just lost). Fortunately, Democrat Tammy Duckworth of Illinois beat Republican incumbent Joe Walsh (the Tea Party-approved Republican who heckled Obama's State of the Union speech).
* For social liberals, two states became the first in the US to approve the use of recreational marijuana. In Colorado, voters passed amendment 64, legalising the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults aged 21 and older; in Washington, their counterparts gave the seal of approval to initiative 502.
* For the most part, voters across the nation rejected the right-wing led tax cut hysteria. For example, in Michigan, a proposal to implement a requirement that tax increases receive a supermajority vote in the state legislature was rejected by a vote of 69 percent to 31 percent. California approved both an increase in the sales tax and a tax increase on those making more than $250,000 per year, with the money hopefully preventing cuts to the state’s university system. California, of course, has been the epicenter of nonsensical anti-tax ballot questions for decades. And nationaide, 60% of those exit-polled believed that tax hikes were necessary to curb the deficit.