Like I mentioned earlier, this is my favorite day. On Nov. 5, that’s when all the finger pointing and recriminations emerge and finally politicians begin to be honest. The voters have spoken and, especially in this election, it’s not hard to understand what they are saying.

What you saw last night was the most clear mandate any president has received since Bill Clinton. What you saw last night was not the Democrats’ answer to the Reagan revolution, like some would lead you to believe. Despite that, our country has moved toward a president who has the clear will of the people and the potential to return government to the good graces of the people it servers.

So what are the pundits saying now that we know what’s what?

The Obama Revolution
By John F. Harriss and Jim Vandehei
Politico

Nov. 4, 2008, was the day when American politics shifted on its axis.

The ascent of an African-American to the presidency — a victory by a 47-year-old man who was born when segregation was still the law of the land across much of this nation — is a moment so powerful and so obvious that its symbolism needs no commentary.

But it was the reality of power, not the symbolism, that changed Tuesday night in ways more profound than meet the eye.

The rout of the Republican Party, and the accompanying gains by Democrats in Congress, mean that Barack Obama will assume office with vastly more influence in the nation’s capital than most of his recent predecessors have wielded.

… For most of the past 30 years, since the dawn of the Reagan Era, conservatives have held the momentum in American politics. Even the Clinton years were shaped — and constrained — by conservative ideas (work requirements for welfare, the Defense of Marriage Act) and conservative rhetoric (“the era of Big Government is over”). Republicans rode this wave to win the presidency five of seven times since 1980, and to dominate Congress for a dozen years after 1994.

Now the wave has crashed, breaking the back of the modern Republican Party in the process.

Obama’s victory and the second straight election to award big gains to congressional Democrats showed that the 2006 election was not, as Karl Rove and others argued at the time, a flukish result that reflected isolated scandals in the headlines at the time.

Hands down, this election proved that the movement to Democrats in 2006 was certainly not a fluke. However, is this really the crash of the Reagan Revolution?

Taking Stock
Posted by Brad Smith
RedState

The picture here this morning looks surprisingly like the picture in the aftermath of the 1992 election.

Senator Obama appears to have won the popular vote by about five points – it will probably be closer to six when all the votes are totaled. He has won somewhere between 349 and 376 electoral votes, depending on the outcome in Nebraska’s third congressional district, Missouri, and North Carolina. Using present vote totals, Obama would take North Carolina out of that group, to finish with 364 electoral votes.

In 1992, Clinton beat Bush by 5.3 percentage points in the popular vote, and finished with 370 electoral votes. Yes, there was a big difference — the presence of Ross Perot — but Clinton almost certainly would have won with or without Perot, and probably by very similar margins in both categories. Bottom line is that Democrats won in 1992 presidential just about what they won in the 2008 presidential.

If fact, even the electoral college map looks quite similar; depending on who wins North Carolina and Missouri, between just nine and eleven states will differ from 1992 to 2008. Most of those were extremely close this year, too, notably Montana and Georgia, which went Democratic in 1992 and narrow Republican in 2008, and Florida, Indiana, and Virginia, which went Republican in 1992 and barely Democratic in 2008.

I agree. The results of this election look strikingly similar to the mandate delivered to Clinton in 1992, except I think the absence of Ross Perot would have made it more difficult for the Democrat to capture a clear majority of voters.

Today, in a short survey of conservative reaction among my friends, I found some absolutely crazed responses to the Obama victory. One reaction:

woe is me….I will sell my house because regardless of what the masses think, President Elect “I’ll give you everything” Obuma is NOT going to pay off my mortgage. Once I do, I am going to invest in some weapons and ammunition, buy a cabin on a hill for tactical advantage against the terrorists when they come, and bury my money in the back yard.

Hopefully, I can hold them off for the next 4 years when the masses realize they have been duped, their money taken from them, and the country is worse then than it ever was.

I think that’s a bit of an over reaction. If conservatives are going to weather this setback and still retain some semblance of their movement, they are going to have to learn from this defeat and adapt. Of course, Michelle Malkin provides the best rallying call for true-blooded conservatives, and she’s even inspired some right-leaning Republican troops questioning the election results:

Gird your loins, conservatives
Michelle Malkin

There is no time to lick wounds, point fingers, and wallow in post-election mud.

I’m getting a lot of moan-y, sad-face “What do we do now, Michelle?” e-mails.

What do we do now? We do what we’ve always done.

We stand up for our principles, as we always have — through Democrat administrations and Republican administrations, in bear markets or bull markets, in peacetime and wartime.

We stay positive and focused.

We keep the faith.

We do not apologize for our beliefs. We do not re-brand them, re-form them, or relinquish them. We defend them.

We pay respect to the office of the presidency. We count our blessings and recommit ourselves to our constitutional republic.

… First assignment for fiscal conservatives in Washington:

1) Oppose the Democrats’ next stimulus boondoggle.
2) Oppose Obama’s windfall profits tax proposal.
3) Oppose new bailouts for states deep in debt.
4) Oppose new foreclosure prevention measures that will simply provide perverse incentives for borrowers to walk away and delay a needed market correction.
5) No more federal loan guarantees for corporations.

If anyone is poised to help Republicans return principled conservatives to office, it’s Michelle. And her draft agenda is quite effective. If Republicans had stayed true to their ideology and opposed the bailout, perhaps voters would have had more love for them on Election Day.

So do conservatives have a chance to retake the flow of air in 2010 and take back the White House in 2012? Absolutely. We don’t know who their candidates will be, but it’s obvious they are suffering from some fundamental difficulties with their electoral strategy (a point I may explore Sunday). But a lot of their potential success will hinge on how Obama uses his mandate to lead. Is Obama prepared to deliver the magical “change” he’s been so eloquent about in the past two years? Of course, that remains to be seen.

Democrats have a lot to be happy about. Though it wasn’t a blowout, like many postulated it could be, it was definitely a major shift. This is a fascinating time. How will transition treat to president-in-waiting? How long will the press honeymoon last for the Democrats before the watchdogs are unleashed yet again? And what is the legacy of George W. Bush? Where is he going and what do Americans think?

Awesome questions, and this will be my political focus in the months to come. Quick question though: I cited, arguably, mostly right-leaning sources in this post. Does that make me more right-wing, moderate or, by some fluke, liberal? I really aspire to be a moderate blog and hopefully I succeed more than I fail. I would be interested in what anyone has to say on the subject (if anyone’s out there!)