Now that Blogger seems to be fully operational again, and I've had time to digest the events of the day, I'll lay my thoughts out for those interested.

There is no doubt that it was a disappointing day for many who wished the presidential election had gone another way. Early last evening, the first states to report in were no surprise. We waited for returns to come in from the midwest, and it took quite some time for that to happen.

We were able to cheer when Pete Coors lost to Ken Salazar in Colorado, and when Russ Feingold and Barack Obama won solid victories for the Senate. The rest of the evening, we waited anxiously for the map to turn blue. New Hampshire flipped blue, but then Nevada flipped red. All eyes remained on Ohio, but our hopes were not realized there. For whatever reason, the exit polls showing Kerry ahead broke with reality.

I'm proud to say Wisconsin went for Kerry. It was by 13,000 votes, but Al Gore won it by only 5708 four years ago. The get out the vote efforts by Democrats were successful in getting the voters to the polls. In the afternoon, I was at the Milwaukee Labor Council headquarters where the GOTV operations were, and it was more packed with volunteers than I'd ever seen it on an election day.

So here we are. There's much work to be done to make the case to Americans that our side has a better way to approach issues like health care, tax policy, energy, environmental protection, and of course foreign policy and national security.

To be clear, President Bush's election today provides plenty of reasons to be concerned. Social conservatives are sure to remind the president how important they were to securing him a second term. That means more conservative judicial appointments, and more fights over issues like abortion, school prayer, and gay marriage. It's going to take a loud opposition to the make the case about why their approach is so wrong for a country that prides itself on its constitutional guarantees of civil liberties.

The fact that Republicans still control both the House and the Senate by slightly larger margins means more of the same agenda and tactics we've seen in recent years. The upside to that is there will be an election day in 2006 when the president's party will not be able to blame the Democrats for their failures. For better or worse, they control the government and will have to answer to the American people again.

Today's defeat is by no means permanent, and those citizens who voted for the first time yesterday need not be disheartened. It's a time to reflect on both the positive and negative, critically assess what needs to be done, and move forward. I love my country, and believe deeply that we can do much better than this.