Man what a wonderful hopey week for America. Let's see how hopeful Robert Novak is, shall we? The headline is promising: "No mandate for Obama, no lopsided Congress." Hah! It's funny because we thought Obama became the first Democratic president since Carter to win with more than 50% of the vote, winning by a larger margin than any Democrat since LBJ, and the Democrats picked up enough Senate and House seats to keep a very comfortable majority? No, apparently that's all wrong. As Novak says:

The national election Tuesday was not only historic for the election of the first African-American president in the nation's history but also for how little the avalanche of Democratic votes changed the political alignment in Congress.

Oh, how we admire the keen work of these expectations game managers. You see, Democrats won everything, but in the last month of the campaign we were told to expect that they'd win everything, so it's only a real victory with a real mandate if they'd won every election by ten million votes! Even though no reasonable observer gave the Dems a better than 33% chance of picking up 60 Senate seats, it's embarrassing that they didn't. The GOP is still strong! Obama is a fraud! This is, of course, small potatoes in the delegitimatization game. Let's go to Mark Levin at The Corner!

If, as Mark Steyn says, "Any shrill vicious ad hominem invective would be much better directed at each other. The Republicans lost this election," then I am not sure why the congratulations to the Obama campaign. I remember reading all of Mark S.'s posts about fraudulent fundraising, ACORN, etc. That hasn't changed with the Obama victory, has it? And I think derangement is always a good thing to avoid, but not to be confused with effective opposition. It will be difficult to voice legitimate criticism of Obama and his policies if the response of his campaign and surrogates these last many months - some vicious and some perfectly fine - is any indication. I agree with Mark when he underscores the battle ahead. It is very serious.

For some reason, everyone else at The Corner is embarrassed to bring up ACORN! What happened, guys? Anyway, Obama just won because the media—sorry, the "Obamedia"—was in the tank. And because of those Black Panthers in Philly. And corruption and illegal immigrants and stuff! Honestly the election wasn't enough of a squeaker to give the fraud and theft accusations much room to take hold, but we're pretty sure the great national healing won't work on a good third of the electorate.