Four More Years.... Grant It Dear Lord in Safety!!

Obama will push for higher taxes on the wealthy as a way to shrink a choking federal debt and to steer money toward the programs he wants. He will try to land a massive financial deficit-cutting deal with Congress in the coming months and then move on to an immigration overhaul, tax reform and other bipartisan dreams.

He will not have to worry that his health care law will be repealed, or that his Wall Street reforms will be gutted, or that his name will be consigned to the list of one-term presidents who got fired before they could finish their work. Voters stuck with him because they trusted him more to solve the struggles of their lifetime.
America may not be filled with hope anymore, but it told Mitt Romney to keep his change. And voters sure didn't shake up the rest of Washington, either.
They put back all the political players who have made the capital dysfunctional to the point of nearly sending the United States of America into default.
"Progress will come in fits and starts," the president cautioned in his victory speech. "The recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won't end all the gridlock ... or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus. But that common bond is where we must begin."
The president likely will be dealing again with a Republican-run House of Representatives, whose leader, Speaker John Boehner, declared on election night that his party has orders from voters, too: no higher taxes.

Obama will still have his firewall in the Senate, with Democrats hanging onto their narrow majority. But they don't have enough to keep Republicans from bottling up any major legislation with delaying tactics.
So the burden falls on the president to find compromise, not just demand it from the other side.
Obama won the electoral vote comfortably, but the popular vote showed the nation he leads — split right in half.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell welcomed Obama with both arms folded.
"The voters have not endorsed the failures or excesses of the president's first term," McConnell said. "They have simply given him more time to finish the job they asked him to do together" with a balanced Congress.
The vanquished Republican, Romney, tried to set the tone on the way off the national stage.
"At a time like this, we can't risk partisan bickering," Romney said after a campaign filled with it. "Our leaders have to reach across the aisle to do the people's work."
For now, Obama can revel in knowing what he pulled off.
Obama won despite an economy that sucked away much of the nation's spirit. He won with the highest unemployment rate — at 7.9 percent — for any incumbent since the Great Depression of the 1930s. He won even though voters said they thought Romney would be the better choice to end stalemate in Washington.
He won even though a huge majority of voters said they were not better off than they were four years ago — a huge test of survival for a president.
The reason is that voters wanted the president they knew. They believed convincingly that Obama, not Romney, understood their woes of college costs and insurance bills and sleepless nights. Exit polls showed that voters viewed Obama as the voice of the poor and the middle class, and Romney the guy tilting toward the rich.
The suspense was over early because Obama won all over the map of battleground states, and most crucially in Ohio. That's where he rode his bailout support for the auto industry to a victory that crushed Romney's chances.
The voice of the voter came through from 42-year-old Bernadette Hatcher in Indianapolis, who voted after finishing an overnight shift at a warehouse.
"It's all about what he's doing," she said. "No one can correct everything in four years. Especially the economy."
Formidable and seasoned by life, Romney had in his pocket corporate success and a Massachusetts governor's term and the lessons of a first failed presidential bid.
But he never broke through as the man who would secure people's security and their dreams. He was close the whole time.

"Americans don't settle. We build, we aspire, we listen to that voice inside that says 'We can do better," Romney pleaded toward that end.
Americans agreed. They just wanted Obama to take them there.
Incumbents get no transition, so Obama will be tested immediately.
A "fiscal cliff" of expiring tax cuts and budget cuts looms on Jan 1.
If they kick in, economists warn the economy will tank, again. Obama, at least, won the right to fight the fight on his terms.
"If I've won, then I believe that's a mandate for doing it in a balanced way," he said before the election — that is, fixing the budget problem by raising taxes on people instead of just cutting spending. Obama is adamant that he will not agree to extend tax cuts for people making above $200,000 or couples with incomes above $250,000.
He had not even been declared the winner before Boehner offered a warning that the House was still in Republican hands.
"With this vote," Boehner said, "the American people have also made clear that there is no mandate for raising tax rates."
Obama, never one to lack from confidence, is ready to take that fight to Congress.

In his eyes, he just won it, thanks to the voters.