What's next?

Okay, so Rove's base strategy worked. 22% of those who voted yesterday were evangelicals, according to Steve Waldman, the founder of Beliefnet. Youth also turned out in record numbers, but so did everybody else. And Ohio is definitely lost--Kerry is conceding at 1 pm EST.

I've scoured my usual sites, however, and have found a few people who have managed to spell out something other than other utter despair, and I urge you to take a look.

• Mark Schmitt thinks "that this will be like Nixon's second term, and thus the seeds of a bigger long-term change than could have occurred just by Kerry winning the election."
• For David Corn, the good news is, paradoxically, that "America is a divided nation. Despite the pundit hand-wringing over this fact, it is a positive thing. Nearly-- nearly--half of the electorate rejected Bush's leadership, his agenda, his priorities, his falsehoods."
• Marc Cooper has a good critique of what went wrong, but also says "the only succor I cling to is the notion that the President’s punishment for being re-elected is that he will now have to manage the myriad catastophes he has conjured."
• And Paul Waldman of The Gadflyer notes: "Progressives need to do what conservatives did forty years ago: build a movement. Not a campaign, not an organization, a movement. Stop thinking about whether you can win the next election and start thinking about creating something that will lead to victories for decades. It's long overdue."