The Buck Starts Here wishes a happy Thanksgiving to our readers.

For progressives there is much to be thankful for this year.

The election could not have turned out much better for those who support equal rights, a progressive tax code and giving everyone equal access to opportunity.

President Obama’s reelection, as well as Democrats increased majority in the Senate and net victories in the House show that the American electorate wants to take a balanced and proven approach to the economy.

We can expect a much brighter economic outlook in the next four years.

We can also expect a much better health care system in the years ahead. Republicans will not be able to repeal Obamacare before all benefits begin in 2014. While some states, like Wisconsin, are putting partisanship ahead of providing access to health insurance the fact is that the Affordable Care Act is here to stay.

In three states voters, for the first time ever, legalized gay marriage and voters in Minnesota rejected an attempt to ban it in the state. Advocates for gay marriage have seven additional states where they believe they can get marriage for all to be the law.

In the face of votes in Maine, Maryland and Washington in November it seems increasingly likely that the Supreme Court will uphold the civil rights denied to too many Americans.

For the sake of all of us it is good that, most of the candidates who decided to make rape victims one of the topics of their campaigns lost. In Missouri, Todd Akin kicked off a season of bizarre discussions about rape, legitimate rape, rape as another form of conception and a dizzying array of nonsensical statements.

Our Capitol will be a better place without them.

There is much to work on in the next few years. We face a fiscal cliff and a deficit that need to be addressed. A tax code that is too rigged for those that can afford expensive lobbyists to cheat the American Treasury and fellow taxpayers. Too many Americans are without jobs. Hurricane Sandy reminded us that no matter what we want to talk about, global climate change is a reality we must face.

This November was tough on climate change deniers as well.

Between this and the next election let’s hope our elected representatives sit at the grown up table and talk about solutions to the problems we face rather than kicking the can and putting all efforts into other elections that is two and four years off.

Elections should be about what our representatives did following the previous election, not an attempt to re-litigate the issues from the last election because nothing was done in the years that followed.

About Bill Buck

Bill Buck is a Democratic strategist, President of the Buck Communications Group, a media relations and new media strategies consulting business based in Washington, DC, and Managing Director of the online ad firm Influence DSP. He has over twenty years of international and national communications experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of CBS Local.