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The hard work paid off. After months on the campaign trail, jokes and jibes and stump speeches and long lines, the election has been won: Barack Obama is our president for four more years, and Michelle Obama our first lady. “Michelle, I’ve never loved you more,” The president said to his wife in his victory speech.

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As the death toll in Syria’s civil war has mounted in recent months, many rebels have wondered why the U.S. government is not doing more to aid their cause in the drawn-out bloody conflict, now entering its 20th month.Despite calling for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad to step down and imposing sanctions on his regime, U.

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Europe —and much of the rest of the world —breathed a collective sigh of relief at the news of President Barack Obama’s win of a second term. The front page of the French daily Libération captured the sympathy and the sentiment: Obama leaned back smiling behind the one-word headline, in English, “YES!” Earlier in the evening, a straw poll at the popular Paris watering hole, Harry’s Bar, gave Obama 305 votes to 182.

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President Obama, the man many saw as curing the country’s “scar of race,” won a second term in the most racially polarized election in decades. Overall, the Romney campaign relied almost entirely on white voters, particularly in the South and among the working class.

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In front of a crowd of thousands of dancing, flag-waving supporters, the newly minted two-term president thanked the country for reelecting him to the Oval Office for four more years. “The task of perfecting our union moves forward,” he said.

Bill O’Reilly: ‘White Establishment’ Now the MinorityDon’t say you didn’t see this one coming. In speculating over how President Obama might pull off a reelection early in the evening, Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly argued that “the white establishment is now the minority,” and the country is “not a traditional America anymore.

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Three of the most rollicking races of the year drew to a dramatic close, with two women scoring victories and one suffering a crushing loss. In Massachusetts, Democrat Elizabeth Warren triumphed in her Senate bid, defying a blizzard of criticism.

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This campaign, like every campaign, pundits offered historical analogies. 2012 was 2004 or 1992 or 1948. But, in the end, it wasn’t any of those. It was 1936.For roughly half a century after the Civil War, Republicans dominated American politics because they dominated the North.

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By the time the polls started to close Tuesday night, there was zero tension among the Democrats milling about the returns-watching party at the Liaison Capitol Hill hotel. Staffers had seen the exit-poll numbers, they had heard the turnout reports, and they were feeling pretty Zen.

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Two outta three ain’t bad, man.Provided the current results hold, marijuana users in Colorado and Washington will soon be legally allowed to puff, puff, and pass—though Oregon is on its way to bogarting a weed initiative there.

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Mitt Romney won plaudits from conservative activists and Beltway insiders alike when he picked Rep. Paul Ryan, the media-anointed Republican budget guru and rising congressional star, as his running mate this August.The logic behind the Ryan pick was simple: quiet any lingering conservative discontent with Romney’s nomination and recast the presidential election as a starkly ideological choice.

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Can Americans be bought? That was one of the key questions this election cycle, as unprecedented amounts of money—some $6 billion—was spent on races around the country, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Spending on House and Senate races alone reached about $1.

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What makes Election Night parties different than perhaps any other celebration is that they take place in a sort of cable-news echo chamber. For most of the evening, the crowd at the Mitt Romney Victory Party at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center was watching Fox News.

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All through Election Day, weary and chilled voters converged on the big white tent that served as a makeshift polling place amidst the devastation in Rockaway. These citizens were in their eighth day without lights or heat. Many, like 60-year-old Raul Romero, also were without running water.

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The most powerful and profound words of the 2012 election were spoken by Michelle Obama:  “Being president,” she said, “doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are.” So does running for president. Character is shown in adversity, and President Obama, who took office in the most adverse of circumstances; who stumbled critically in the first debate; who was hit with a depression in his first days of his term and a hurricane in the last, has shown his character.