This is a rough paraphrasing of my Facebook post from this morning, so it will be familiar to some of you.

I woke up this morning feeling more satisfied by an election than I ever have previously in my lifetime. I'm not talking about the Presidency - in fact, it's primarily NOT the Presidency which has me in a good mood. That's not to say that I'm in the "both sides are the same yaddah yaddah" camp - hardly. It's more that even aside from the Presidency there was a nation-wide repudiation of Republican social policy.

Our country has elected our first openly gay Senator.

The pro-rape candidates went 0/3.

Marriage equality went 4/4 (or well, 3/3 and 1/1 for not banning it).

Loosening of marijuana laws went 3/3.

The worst of the Florida props went down overwhelmingly.

Michigan had pretty much a clean sweep with their props, including getting rid of the draconian "state government can appoint local governments" law which passed in 2010.

Washington did as well (aside from the 2/3rds vote one....ugh you guys are going to regret that).

Montana has explicitly stood up and declared that corporations are not people (in a giant "screw you" to Citizens United. As a sidenote, they had previously been the only state where corporate advertising was previously banned - this election was the first one which had allowed corporate donations to advertising and I gather they didn't like it. I'm kinda expecting Montana to evolve into the new New Hampshire at this point).

California went 4/5 on the bigger propositions - 30 passed which prevents the education cuts and finally institutes something resembling sane income tax brackets given how many wealthy individuals we have in this state. (For the record, prior to this election, aside from a millionaire tax which got added in the last year or two, I guess, the top marginal income tax bracket started at $46,766. As a brand new college grad, I was already in the same tax bracket as the multimillionaires down in Hollywood). 32 failed, preventing Citizens United from allowing unlimited corporate funding from out of state while stifling unions from being able to make any political statements. 34 failed, unfortunately, so we still have the death penalty, but there's so many restrictions on it right now that it's barely ever utilized anyway. 36 passed, so the three strikes law actually requires a violent felony for the third strike AND current convicts whose third strike was a non-violent one will be able to gain reduced sentencing - this is something our prison system NEEDED, and will save TONS of money. And 39 passed, closing a corporate tax loophole and getting it in line with more liberal states like....Texas.

The Democratic Party gained seats in the Senate (somehow o.o), and while Republicans retain control of the House, many of their worst "slash-and-burn refuse to compromise on any point" representatives like Allen West are gone. (Got SO CLOSE to Bachmann. Ah well, that would have been the cherry on top).

And in addition to that, we may have started the process of Puerto Rico becoming our 51st state. (How about taking care of DC at the same time and making it 52? No taxation without representation, etc, etc).

All in all, it feels pretty damn good