The sun hasn't come over the horizon just yet. It still has a few more hours to go. Last night was long, waiting for the returns to come in. In the end, President Obama won the Electoral and popular vote. He will have four more years in office. Will this lead to an end to gridlock? Of course not. Just like his election in 2008 didn't open up the United States to a post-racial America, his election yesterday wasn't a landslide and it won't be a mandate. Many people would like this to be the start of bipartisanship, but people have a way of letting old wounds fester. They have a way of not allowing to move on without letting in one last kick.

Trust me, I'm not trying to rain on the good times a good number of people feel, but looking at some of the right wing websites and commentary given last night, claiming some as being sore losers would be an understatement. There are going to be conspiracy theories that people will clutch to, there will be people who will depute the numbers. Karl Rove was apparently angry with the numbers the Fox News number crunchers were giving out about Ohio last night. When I watched a little of Fox News, before the close of the polls on the West Coast, the look on Ed Rollins face interpreting the election numbers was a face of someone who was a competitive golfer who realized he was losing to a weekend warrior. There was a sense of disbelief and a bit of anger on his face.

The right wing weren't the only people that were upset with the election. I saw a lot of disappointed left wing Facebook posts because of the defeat of different propositions in certain states. Yes, the anger wasn't as strong as it was for the right wing nationally, but their progressive anger illustrated a bit of disappointment I have with the progressives. Republicans always have a way of putting on a strong front even when the evidence isn't in their favor. When they lose, you know they will be back stronger the next time. They may not have the numbers but they will have the passion. Progressives will find defeat in the face of victory. If everything doesn't go exactly their way, some will act like children who got vanilla ice cream instead of the chocolate ice cream they wanted. They can't savor the fact they got ice cream.

As an example, look at what happened with the President among progressives just a few years ago. They felt he hadn't done enough fast enough with things like don't ask don't tell or immigration. Because of this, many didn't go out and vote in the mid term elections. That allowed for more Tea Party members to get into Congress and caused more gridlock. Elections aren't things we do every two years then forget about them. When we hire people for a job we don't leave them alone for a year or two before evaluating them. We constantly check on them. We don't do that with politicians. We say we do, but the truth is we look at Congress as a whole instead of individual parts and when we do blame part of Congress as being bad, we are quick to think our representative is good but it is the other guy who is bad. You can't blame the gridlock on Congress to an Alan West or Michelle Bachmann. If they aren't in your state or district you can't shame those in the region to change their minds. You have to make sure your representative is doing the job you want them to do.

When people don't check on federal, state and local issues, trouble will occur. For two years talk of voter fraud and suppression laws were thought to be about 'those people.' Images on TV were always of low income (and let's just make the translation and saw black and Hispanic) neighborhoods. While there was a possible crisis, the majority of the population didn't think it was a problem. Voter ID wasn't thought of as a problem with a majority of voters. How many times was it said that if you had to get liquor or had to get on an airplane you needed proper ID? The common reasoning was everyone had ID and if you didn't you must me illegal or not eligible to vote.

Yesterday people saw what happened when you ignored the warning signs. In Arizona, there were record numbers of people who had to fill out provisional ballots. In some polling places over half of the voters had to fill them out. The local television press, and I'm not sure if this was done for balance or laziness, talked about how a lot of the provisional issues were taking place at Hispanic areas but showed scenes of people in white areas. People were frustrated. People couldn't understand why their votes had to be provisional. The people in charge of the election didn't give convincing explanations as to why there was a high number of provisional ballots, especially in the fact that this wasn't the case in August when there was a primary in some sections of Arizona and the earlier primary this year. Even I was caught in the provisional ballot conundrum.

It was a wild two years of politics. I haven't done it yet, but I look forward to turning on my TV or surfing the web and NOT seeing political ad.

This is the video where I talk about my experience voting this election season