Having stayed up to watch the President-reelect’s acceptance speech—Mr. President, you couldn’t have pushed that up half an hour?—I am exhausted, probably too exhausted to say anything particularly insightful. (Not that it would automatically be otherwise if I were well-rested.)

But I’m also delighted. Looking at a map of the country, I am hard pressed to see how things could have gone much better. It’s not just that Obama won, but that he won in some places he wasn’t expected to—Virginia, for example, and probably Florida. That drives the pro-‘bama message home. And he won in states that were thought to be possibly up for grabs—New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, Colorado and Nevada. And he was competitive in states where he wasn’t expected to be: North Carolina, for example.

It will be hard for the Republicans—though not impossible!—to not get the message. (Already you hear some Republicans talking about how the party does better when it runs a more purist, more conservative candidate. Oh, bullshit.) The party must become more centrist, more inclusive, more tolerant, if it is not to become irrelevant. Trying to turn back the clock on women’s rights…preaching bigotry against gays….encouraging Latinos to deport themselves…this is a losing game. And isn’t the fact that this strategy did not pay off for the GOP deeply reassuring?

So, yes, I’m encouraging the Republicans to become more like the Democrats. What ideological differences will be left for them? Well, differences about the role of government and what drives the economy. Is that enough for a political party to recapture a majority? I’m not sure—but it can’t be a worse approach than that of the current GOP.

Considering the election results, I’m struck by just how much there was at stake. For social purposes, it felt important to me that our first black president was reelected; that his election not be seen as some sort of anti-GWB fluke. Then there was the preservation of Obamacare, which strikes me as profoundly important. I expect that in some years we will wonder what all the fuss against it was about, anyway. The Supreme Court. Civil rights for gays and women. A more welcoming approach to Latinos and, I hope, an end to the harsh and racist laws now in existence or being proposed in some conservative states. A progressive attitude towards the enviornment, and a recognition of the need to fight climate change.

I also look at some of the Republicans who were beaten last night—Richard Mourdock, Todd Akins, Linda McMahon, Allen West—and I think that this is a very important sign in terms of what kind of country we want to have. Do we want to elect politicians who preach division and ignorance? Do we want to reward secretive billionaires who pump money into our political system without attribution or integrity? Or do we want to elect calmer, more rational minds who might actually be able to help solve some of the country’s problems? After last night, it seems like the latter is true.

I’m also delighted that this is a major political setback for Paul Ryan, a pseudo-intellectual of the most dangerous type—an ideologue convinced of his own rightness because everybody around him keeps telling him how smart he is, evidence to the contrary. Not only will he not be vice-president, but he couldn’t even help Romney carry his home state of Wisconsin. Fantastic. Everything that weakens Paul Ryan’s political power is good for the country.

As for Romney—I can’t say that I feel sorry for him. Let’s be honest: He is a man so cravenly ambitious that he would take any position, abandon any principle, if he thought it would win him votes. He ran an intellectually dishonest campaign—I won’t tell you what loopholes I’ll cut! Tax returns? What tax returns? health care reform like the kind I passed? Terrible. I’ll kill it!—in which he discarded his centrism, rejected his landmark achievement, then returned to his centrism when he thought it would help. Like an Etch-a-Sketch, as his closest advisor once said, and for a time, I feared that Romney would get away with it; that America’s Twitter-short attention span would cause voters to forget not only how far we had come since the fall of 2008, but how much Romney had changed, and changed again, in just the past year.

It’s fascinating to think of what Romney will do now, because when he’s not running for jobs that elevate himself, he really doesn’t have a record of public service. (And no, contributing to the Mormon Church doesn’t count, nor does the Olympics, because giving money to a cultish religion or helping organize a sporting event just isn’t public service. It just isn’t.) In what political wilderness can Mitt Romney actually do anything useful?

As for the president, I have been a bigger supporter of him than those Democrats who had drifted away. Yes, he wasn’t perfect. Yes, he couldn’t live up to the rhetoric of his 2008 campaign. But then, let’s be honest: This last wasn’t his fault. He faced a political opposition which made a point of refusing to work with the president on anything; which was willing to hurt the country in order to improve its chances of returning to power. You can not say that Obama didn’t try to work with the GOP; you can say that the GOP had no interest in working with him.

And let’s look at the record. For all the flaws in his handling of the financial crisis, Obama supported the right moves on a macro scale—easing of monetary policy and a stimulus package. Nobody liked the bank bailouts, but in retrospect they were probably the right thing to do and the government will likely actually make some money off them. The auto bailout worked. Period.

So on the biggest crisis facing the nation, Obama did reasonably well—a B+, I’d give him. And that’s just the start. He got us out of Iraq and is moving towards the same thing in Afghanistan. A huge expense in personal and financial terms that the country just couldn’t afford. He made the decision to try to kill Bin Laden, which was by no means a slam dunk, and it worked. He cut taxes for the middle class. He ended “don’t ask, don’t tell.” He came out in favor of gay marriage. He supported equal pay for women. He preserved the balance of the Supreme Court. He could have been better on environmental stuff, but he was unquestionably better than a Republican president would have been, and it is very difficult to be an environmental purist in economic hard times. (I mean, Romney attacked him for the price of gas, for chrissake, as if the president has anything to do with the price of gas.) He supported the Dream Act and instituted a path to citizenship for millions of Latinos. He passed health care reform. He signed Dodd-Frank. He created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He helped oust dictators in Egypt and Libya. He ended profiteering in the federal student loan program. And so on, and so on—there’s much more.

How could anyone deny that this is a record of profound achievement—especially when facing a bitter and polarized Congress, half of which will not work with him and a decent percentage of that half which does not like him because of the color of his skin?

Obama has worked his butt off for his country amidst remarkable and unique circumstances for a president. (Having his citizenship called into question, being attacked as a Muslim, being hung in effigy, and so on and so on.) Mitt Romney has worked his butt off to become a very rich man. How could Romney be rewarded for that with the highest office in the world? How could Obama not be rewarded for all that he has done with a chance to continue his work and cement his legacy?

Let me put it in a more personal way. Every morning I pick up my son from his crib when he starts to rustle and cry. I carry him to the window and raise the shade, and together we look from our window on the 23rd floor onto the human vista below. We see the streets of Brooklyn, teeming with people of every color and creed. We look out onto Manhattan, a locus of the tolerance and diversity that are among the best qualities of this great country. Looking out across New York Harbor, we see the Statue of Liberty holding her torch high, and beyond that the powerful presence of Ellis Island and its immigration museum. Every morning I am thrilled and moved by the America I see in front of me.

Pacifier firmly in mouth but eyes bright, my son looks out, fascinated by all this energy and history and activity and newness. “It’s a happy morning in Brooklyn,” I say to him every day, and hold him as tight as he will let me.

Today it is a very happy morning in Brooklyn.