I see where Kurt's coming from. It's the same frustration that caused a lot of us to seriously consider voting third-party this time. Obama is a centrist conservative in a lot of key ways, and being a member of one of the two major parties is just as beholden to moneyed interests and the military industrial surveillance state as the Republicans. So I can understand why the overwhelming celebratory gloating from self-professed liberals can seem odd, as if they think tonight were really a victory for serious liberal causes.
That said, I think the election can also be seen as an unqualified rebuke by Americans of the unhinged Republican philosophy -- of promising to repeal urgently needed health care reform, of tax cuts for the rich, of placing further restriction's on women's rights, of assuming government can be run like a business -- and in that sense this was a liberal victory. Even with the economy in the state it is, the American people looked at the guy campaigning in the somewhat more liberal direction and the guy promising to roll back everything he had done, and proclaimed that they still trusted the first guy more. That's a body-blow to conservatives who insist that the country is center-right and secretly agree with them, and it's is a necessary step on the way to a true solution to health care reform. There are certainly ways in which Obama is absolutely appalling on human rights issues and civil liberties, but given that both the two parties are basically equivalent on those, this election can't be seen as a referendum on them anyway, much as I do think the American people should care more about them.
