Pity the American people for imagining that they have just elected the new Congress. In a formal way, they of course have. The public did vote. But in a substantive way, it's not true that they have chosen their government. This was the billionaires' election, billionaires of both parties.

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Regardless of one's party, serious citizens concerned for our country's future should be thinking seriously about where our politics are headed, not just left or right but forward or backward.

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Supporters of Tennessee's Amendment 1 that just passed with 53% of the vote now plan to roll out several regulations to restrict access to abortion. Here is the underlying assumption and net affect behind each of the three new regulations.

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Democratic strategists have been segmenting the electorate and seeking individual self-interest-based issues in each electoral block. The strategists also keep suggesting a move to the right. This has left no room for the Democrats to have an overriding authentic moral identity that Americans can recognize.

Alamy

Let me tell you my modest post-9/11 dream. One morning, I'll see a newspaper article that begins something like this: "The FBI is attempting to persuade an obscure regulatory body in Washington to change its rules of engagement in order to curtail the agency's significant powers to hack into and carry out surveillance of computers."

The Court majority in Citizens United explicitly based its misguided decision on two grounds: campaign expenditures by outside groups would be made independently from candidates and full disclosure of the campaign activities would provide accountability to citizens and shareholders. Neither has happened.

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President Obama will have to decide. Will he now to lay out what the country needs, make his case, make the choices clear, and stand against those who would take the country back? Or will he provide cover for deals that stack the deck even more for the powerful and against the rest of us?

What do you say after an election night like November 4? We lost. As a matter of fact, some have called it "a bloodbath." We are educators though. We must take a stand. We must talk to our communities and business partners about what is right for our schools.

Though Ronald Reagan's call to "tear down this wall" has come to be iconic of his role in the last days of the Cold War, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was widely seen as the leader primarily responsible for the change.

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Obama now has around two months to come out with some sort of relief as the deportation counter keeps ticking away. He is still encouraging the GOP to come out with something, but has doubled down on his promise to reform as much of the immigration system as he legally can if they don't.

Too many Democrats did not make a clear and convincing case about the consequences of policies pushed by far-right activists and promoted by Republican elected officials. And that allowed the debate to become a referendum on voters' feelings about Barack Obama.

This election shows that the Republican Party in Texas is quite capable of making a play for a solid portion of the Texas Latino vote. If Democrats want to have any hope of changing the dynamics of statewide politics in Texas, they need to lose their illusions about a coming tide of Latino voters who will save them.

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If Obama doesn't want his legacy to be a conservative Republican successor as president in 2016, he should vigorously resist this path of pro-corporate "bipartisan" consensus.

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Korean human rights activists send all sorts of things by balloon across the border into North Korea. Despite the volume of these deliveries, it's not clear whether much of the contraband makes it into the hands of the intended recipients. What is clear, however, is that the North Korean government is very unhappy about this activism.

So why did so many races go Right? I think it comes down to one thing: Democratic nominees forgot about the power of the internet and tried fighting Republicans in a conventional war of television ads, mailers and rallies.

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There is an important lesson to be learned from the election results last night: Women, moms, and their families will continue to advocate for these issues until every worker is guaranteed paid sick days, affordable childcare, and are paid a fair, livable wage.

The tech exodus from the American Legislative Exchange Council continues, with German software giant SAP ending its membership in the anti-climate lobbying group. The blow is especially harsh as ALEC's corporate board was chaired by SAP lobbyist Steve Seale.