So, this is what it feels like to be on the winning side of a national election. Excuse us for hyperventilating -- it's been a while. Our teeth are still on edge from the improbability of it all.

Some of us spent Tuesday evening watching the returns and wondering when the numbers would begin turning inexplicably in the Republicans' favor.

How long, we wondered, before Karl Rove unleashed the slavering hounds of voter machine fraud on the long suffering souls of Ohio, Missouri and Virginia?

After Rove told National Public Radio late last month that he had private intel showing the Republicans in much better shape than the dismal numbers cited by the mainstream media, it gave us pause.

Surely the man credited with being "Bush's brain" wouldn't risk his reputation on what would be revealed as a pointless lie on Election Day, right?

One symptom of having spent too much time exiled in the political wilderness is a tendency to take Rove's bluster seriously.

There's nothing a talented sleight-of-hand artist loves more than to be mistaken for omnipotent. That's not a mistake Democrats are likely to make about Karl Rove again. He has become the architect of the greatest political miscalculation in recent American history.

An examination of the drool stains on our shirts will prove we spent much of Tuesday night with our mouths wide open. Our jubilation danced on the slick knife's edge of incredulity all night.

Come on, did anyone really think Jason Altmire was going to beat Melissa Hart in the 4th Congressional District? As much as your Democratic heart may have wanted it to happen, such a prediction would have been crazy.

Last week you couldn't turn on a TV without seeing ads insinuating that Altmire pushes old people out of hospital windows when not getting his marching orders from Hillary Clinton.

Just when we were beginning to think the system was hopelessly rigged to favor incumbents no matter how complacent, corrupt or arrogant, the stars aligned and the American electorate let loose with a collective howl of disgust before rushing to the polls to vote the bums out.

We knew some Republican incumbents were marked for death and that the House of Representatives was "tilting" Democratic, but predictions of a clean sweep of both chambers seemed, at best, a fantasy cooked up by Rahm Emanuel at a fund-raiser at Barbra Streisand's house.

But somehow, a politically diverse but uncharacteristically disciplined batch of Democratic candidates appealed to enough true believers and Independents to assemble a winning coalition.

Something remarkable happened in America earlier this week. After hard fought battles, adversaries reached across the political divide to shake hands.

Rick Santorum gave a gracious concession speech on the evening of his greatest political humiliation. Selflessly extolling his family and teary supporters to applaud Bob Casey's historic win, Santorum earned the respect of folks who once equated him with the devil.

Some concession speeches were more gracious than others, but all were in keeping with the best of our tradition of non-violent political succession. In this country, we don't force our political opponents from political office with guns. There are no electoral militias -- just associations of like minded citizens voting their conscience every few years.

It isn't a perfect system; in fact, it's terribly flawed, but it's hard to imagine a better way of ensuring another century or two of vaguely representative government.

During the campaign and at his press conference Wednesday, President Bush used the term "Democrat" as an adjective when he referred to the Democratic party.

Referring to it as the "Democrat Party" instead of "Democratic" is a clumsy attempt to separate one of America's great electoral tribes from the most revered word in our national vocabulary. A group that has re-energized itself after a dozen years in the wilderness while the GOP has drifted into disaster under Mr. Bush's watch deserves more respect than that.

For a long time, it was easy to run away from the Democratic party because the disarray and infighting was embarrassing. Things have changed. There's nothing like a closely-fought election to restore one's faith in democracy. After too many years on the outside looking in, I feel as if I have my country back.