I know it has already been seeded and posted around here...

...but I'm sorry, I just can't not talk about it at least a little.

President Obama paid a surprise visit to his Chicago campaign headquarters on Wednesday -- the day after he was re-elected the 44th president of the United States -- to talk with his campaign workers.  What everyone thought would be a simple "thanks, guys, for a great job" sort of speech turned into an emotional personal testimony to the value of the kind of work they've been doing, and will likely continue to do.

For the second time in as many days, Mr. Obama -- not as the candidate, and not even as president -- got a little choked-up as he recognized how his own trip down the very path that these young people are now traveling had so come full circle with his re-election to likely the last public office he will ever fill.

And, so, for the second time in as many days, he got me choked-up, too.  I could say "for the second time in as many elections," as well, because when Mr. Obama won in 2008, I literally wept... first, in happiness for his historic victory; and second in sadness, because Prop 8 was passed in my state (at the hands of Romney's Mormons, it's both worthy of note and remembrance, and no small coincidence).

Though I'm not gay (not, mind you, as Jerry Seinfeld once taught us in his Seinfeld TV show episode, "The Outing" -- video clip here -- that there'd be anything wrong with that), but as someone who officiated over many same-sex marriage ceremonies during the summer of 2008, when it was legal in California, I had no small amount of skin in the Prop 8 game.  Click here (a PDF file) for more on that.  

On Tuesday night, as in 2008, no amount of trying kept the tears from falling as MS-NBC officially called the election for Obama.  Despite New York Times columnist Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight Blog's insistence that Obama would win; and similar predictions, for similar reasons, by the likes of the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, I was worried.  As the first polls closed at around 3:00 PM my (pacific) time (6:00 PM eastern time), I felt my stomach rise up into my throat; and I worried for the next nearly six hours, until 8:10 PM my (pacific) time (11:10 PM eastern time) when MS-NBC announced that Obama had won Ohio, and so, with it, Obama's re-election to a second term as the 44th president of the United States.  The video still causes a little catch in my throat; as has, now, the video of Mr. Obama's heartfelt words to his campaign workers on Wednesday.

Compare the obvious real and heartfelt emotion of that to, and contrast that with, how Romney treated his campaign workers.  According to Forbes Magazine -- and now many others, too -- Romney finished writing his concession speech on Tuesday night (because he so believed he was going to win that he hadn't prepared one), then curtly delivered it...

...and then, quite literally the instant he walked off that stage, he canceled all campaign worker credit cards, leaving them stranded wherever they happened to be at that moment, all still either working for him on one level or another, or trying to get home therefrom.  Actually, it was NBC's Garret Haake who broke the story, writing, regarding it:

From the moment Mitt Romney stepped off stage Tuesday night, having just delivered a brief concession speech he wrote only that evening, the massive infrastructure surrounding his campaign quickly began to disassemble itself.

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

SOURCE:  Click here.

Though he cut-off his campaign workers' credit cards, Romney apparently remembered to pay the bill for the "President-elect Mitt Romney" website that accidentally (and, gratefully, only briefly) went live after the election: Click here.  Thank goodness the fireworks people didn't have itchy fingers, too: Click here.

As Esquire Magazine's Charles P. Pierce so deftly put it: "In the House of Romney, there are only two kinds of people... the Romneys, and The Help."  Read, also, my other relevant Newsvine posting about Romney's pathology -- and the comments, beneath -- by clicking here.  

Religion Dispatches's Anthea Butler writes, also deftly, about Romney in her article, "Election Takeaway: Fake God Talk Doesn't Cut it With Americans."  The Politicus USA website summed it up, nicely, with the story headline, "In the End, Obama’s Compassion for All Routed the GOP’s Greed and Contempt;" and the Huffington Post's Yashir Ali writes, "Why Mitt Romney Lost: Empathy."

Is Tuesday night's momentous outcome any wonder, then?  Think back on the lie, after lie, after lie, after lie, ad nauseam, that Romney and his nefarious campaign told, month, after month, after month throughout 2012... and even long before that.

Beneath an article on the Huffington Post about Romney being "shellshocked" after his election night loss to Mr. Obama, a commenter wrote:

While Mr. Entitled was shell shocked that Americans rejected him and his party's divisive policies, our great President was over at his campaign headquarters personally thanking his staff for all of the hard work they did.  I just saw the video of him, and he had tears rolling down his face as he gave them his heartfelt thanks, and told them they were the greatest group of people that he had ever had the pleasure to work with.  He told them all how intelligent and bright they are, and that no matter what they choose to do now, he knows they will all be very successful.

To see this wonderful man moved to tears, with the gratitude and generosity he felt for these people, made me so proud to know that I voted for a man who genuinely DOES know how we average Americans live, and that he truly does care about us having better lives and more opportunities.  We re-elected a great man, and we should all feel proud of it.

Exactly.  Well said.  And I do.