President Bush has won a convincing re—election in terms of the popular vote. His margin is in the millions, and he has won an absolute majority, something Bill Clinton never did.

The Electoral College total, absent provisional ballots, also appears to have given him a win. Those Democrats who piously declared in 2000 that 'Gore won' because of his narrow popular vote plurality are finding that their shoes don't fit very well when put on the other foot.

Even if the votes of 'Mary Poppins' and other crack—fueled suspicious registrants in Ohio are counted, it would take a huge Kerry margin, on the order of 9 to 1, to swing Ohio's 20 electors. Does anyone think such a margin is legitimately possible?

The right thing to do, obviously, would be for John F. Kerry to take Andrew Card's words to heart, and 'reflect' before sending in the lawyers to contest Ohio's six—digit verdict against him, or any other state totals. Let us hope that he is listening to advisors smarter and more temperate than Sugar Mama Teresa, and that he finds some class to go along with all of that money of her late husband.

The putative hero of the Vietnam War surely understands that a wartime nation can ill—afford a protracted distraction when under threat of terror attack, and when our troops need a Commander in Chief able to plan beyond the next couple of months. The nation has spoken.

The Democrats also need to think seriously about the future consequences of trying to win by cheap lawyer tricks, in the face of a clear popular vote repudiation of their candidate. For four years, they have fuelled their core supporters' anger with theories of justice they now contemplate discarding in favor of a misguided quest for power at any price.

The exit polling debacle ('outrage, in Dick Morris's well—chosen words), with Kerry systematically reported as a convincing victor in states he went on to convincingly lose, raises many questions. The results were 'leaked' long before they were to be officially released by the TV networks which paid for the surveys. Someone obviously was seeking to discourage Bush voters from turning out.

But the bigger question is how the exit polls could all be so far off, and off in one direction only. The legacy media's reputation is already in tatters. The appearance of anti—GOP bias has only been heightened by Election Day 2004. CBS has already got an internal investigation underway over its Rathergate scandal. Its mandate should be expanded, and the other news outlets which sponsored the exit polling should launch their own inquiries.

Probably, the answer is simply to eschew further exit polling, since spectacularly incorrect forecasts, leaked prematurely, are worse than none. Especially when there is obvious political bias at work. Even if the networks should decide to waste their money on exit polling in the future, nobody will believe them, anyway.

The expansion of the GOP mandate in the House and the Senate is consistent with President Bush's victory. Anger is not a winning issue for the Democrats. But will they summon the wisdom to change course? The odds are not good.

4:40 AM, Pacific Standard Time