As we await Obama....Virginia, Nevada and Florida have still not been called but he has destroyed his opponents, and it looks like the only battleground state he lost was North Carolina. Extraordinary.
Journalists covering this election were never a 100 per cent sure that the micro-targetting of this campaign was going to deliver as much as the confident Obama operatives said that it would. Well it did deliver. The Democrats increased their margins of victory in so many counties and in key demographics.
The sheer enthusiasm of the "Hope and Change" election of '08 became the cooly efficient data-mining and demographic targeting operation of 2012.
One CNN commentator called this re-election against the backdrop of 7.8 per cent unemployment as "miraculous".
Meanwhile it looks like despite the odds, Democrats will increase their slim Senate majority, giving them better leverage in the coming fiscal battles.
An important legacy of this election is the liberal gains on marriage equality (Maryland and Maine look like passing this) decriminalization of marijuana in one state, the increase of women in Congress (including the first all-women Congressional delegation plus Governor of New Hampshire) and the election of the first openly gay Senator (in the State of Wisconsin).