Back to the future, my fellow Americans. Anyone remember American in 1979-80? The gas lines, the year long hostage crisis in the US embassy in Tehran. American prestige at an all time low. An aggressive Soviet Union flexing its military might, testing and pressing a weakened, and demoralized post-Vietnam US military all over the globe.

And the “misery index?”..The sum of unemployment and inflation rates, which peaked under Jimmy at 22%..

It took Carter 4 years to try and ruin America. It’s gonna take Obama 8. And he will do far worse damage than Carter ever did, because Obama is a dangerous, committed, hard-left ideologue, whereas Carter was just incompetent. The road back will be a long, hard slog, but we will prevail.

And maybe that’s what America really needs, as Nietzsche wrote, “to look into the abyss….” For some of us, we can already see the future, it has looked backed at us, but for the majority of Americans, not yet. But it will, oh, will it ever.

And while Tuesday was a huge disappointment, this country is not lost, not changed irrevocably. Far from it.

Obama managed to get about as many votes as Kerry did in 2004, and way below his 2008 total.

This from Jim Geraghty’s National Review column today:

Obama’s margins of victory:

Virginia: 107,339
Ohio: 100,736
Florida: 47,493
Colorado: 111,094
Nevada: 66,379

Some 430,000, out of 120,000,000 votes cast, were the difference in FIVE, count ‘em, FIVE states. We win those, Mitt has 281 EVs, and we’re all smiling today.

A mandate, my ass!!

And for those of us who think that America under Carter in 1980 was awful, try to recall what Great Britain was like when Maggie Thatcher came to power. The country, the social fabric, was disintegrating after decades of socialist rule..there was union anarchy everywhere. And look what the Iron Lady accomplished.

It starts now, with the negotiations on the debt ceiling and sequestration. And we must begin to look at the 2014 mid-term elections. The economy will worsen these next 2 years, sadly. Stock markets will drop, unemployment will not abate, and the impact, the cost of Obamacare will start to become obvious to the average American.

We will expand our conservative majority in the House, and we will, this time, gain several seats in the Senate, with a good chance at getting the 6 needed for majority control. There are 33 seats up, only 10 are GOP, and they are safe. Many of the Democrats are vulnerable, and the votes that Reid will force them to take will make them wildly unpopular at home.

We have many great, young, conservative leaders in our party. They will start to step up into the national spotlight. Some will shine, others will be seen as lacking. The winnowing process will begin anew.

If I may be permitted to gently modify one of President Reagan’s most oft-quoted lines:

“America’s best days are STILL ahead!”