There are a lot of post-mortems going on assessing who the winners and losers from this election. I submit that the American electorate is the biggest winner of all. Americans showed that when it really matters, they will get out and vote. They also showed that they know better to put much stock in the rantings of the fringe lunatics. Michael Moore made a movie with the sole purpose of defeating President Bush. Kitty Kelly authored a piece of trash tell all book with the same purpose. MoveOn compared Bush to Hitler. After being bombarded with all of this hatred, the electorate ignored it and voted based on the issues that were important to them.

Exit polling shows that the issues broke down pretty evenly between moral values, the economy, and the war. Noticeably absent was a sizable block saying they voted against Bush because he knew about 9/11 before hand and/or that he is a coke-head chimp faced Hitler. Unfortunately for Kerry, there was actually a backlash against that kind of idiotic rhetoric. Even though he was not responsible for it, it hurt him by association. Kind of like the Bin Laden video last Friday - Bin Laden ripping into Bush could only hurt Kerry. Kerry of course had his flaws, so did Bush. Yet both men got more people to vote for them than almost anyone who has ever run for president - because there are people who agree with the ideas embodied in them and their parties, not because of the rantings of madmen.

BTW, this business about this election being about rejecting gay marriage is getting old already. This election was NOT exclusively an endorsement of one candidates stance on moral issues. Sure, religious conservatives make up a portion of the coalition of interest groups in the Republican party - they also do in the Democrat party. Many are pointing out that moral issues edged out all other issues for most important among those that voted for Bush. That interpretation is faulty, however, if based on the common questions in the exit polls which treated Iraq and terrorism as separate issues. Both of those issues polled nearly as strongly individually as moral issues did. The important bit of information about that is that a majority of people see Iraq and terrorism as one issue - so it would be more accurate to say that the majority of people who voted for Bush listed the war on terrorism as the number one issue. InstaPundit has a roundup of links on this that is worth checking out if you are interested in more information.