Exactly a year ago, we were jumping up and down with excitement that we had elected the first African American president. Not only that, the Republicans had their butts whipped during the congressional races. All was right with the world: Bush was on his way out and Reagan was finally dead.

Not so fast: The empire strikes back (cue John Williams' 'Imperial March').

Last night, voters in two major population centers, important ones for Democrats, rejected Democratic candidates in favor of the Republican lower-taxes-smaller-government rhetoric that never comes to fruition.

Gov. John Corzine waged a major battle in New Jersey, but high debt and taxes persuaded voters to kick him to the curb for Republican challenger Chris Christie (pictured above), despite the fact that Corzine's GOP predecessor, Christie Whitman, put the party in the doghouse in the first place. Meanwhile in Virginia, Republican front runner Robert McDonnell took the governor's office back from the Democrats after beating R. Creigh Deeds.

Now the GOP is hitting the airwaves, claiming that Republicans shot back at President Obama, and that his agenda and the 2010 congressional races are all in jeopardy. FOX News will probably declare America a right-wing theocracy and order the sterilization of all minorities. But the truth is, the right wing didn't take anything back. The Republican wins were the result of a lag in voter turnout.

Last year in the presidential election, President Obama took 1.9 million votes in Virginia. This year, McDonnell won the governorship with 1.1 million votes. Similarly, 2.2 million people voted for Obama in New Jersey last year, but last night, just over a million people voted for Corzine. So when you do the math, there was a significant drop in these two important governor's races.

The Democrats failed to convince voters to go to the polls and get behind them. But it's not the end of the world for Obama. He's there for at least three more years. The rest of the Democratic Party, though, needs to do everything, and I mean everything, it can to make sure Democratic voters get their butts in gear next November, because rest assured, these guys now think that GOP grandbabymomma Sarah Palin is a shoo-in for the 2012 presidential election.

Meanwhile, in municipal elections, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg just edged past challenger Bill Thompson for a third term. This was one most of us could have predicted, but I'm glad the race ended as tightly as it did with Bloomberg taking only 51 percent of the vote. The reason it was so close is because New Yorkers resented the billionaire-turned-politician usurping rule of law and circumventing the city's election term limits to run again. That set a bad precedent and could mean future politicians would trample all over voters' rights.

So congratulations, New Yorkers, for sending the message that no politician is bigger than democracy itself!

In Detroit, another rich guy–turned-politician, Dave Bing, had no problem defeating challenger Tom Barrow, who has run for mayor like 6 million times and never even came close. Bing, who is an NBA Hall-of-Famer and founder of Bing Steel, has his work cut out for him, though. The city is still running millions in debt, is facing very tough municipal cuts and dealing with an unemployment rate of between 23 and 35 percent, depending on who's counting.

But there is one silver lining for the Motor City (which I still like to refer to as "the crib"): Voters there also passed a referendum in which city council members will be elected by district rather than at-large. On the sneak tip, that is the first time in more than a century the city legislature has had this structure, and it is guaranteed to change the political landscape more than any Detroiter currently realizes.

Also, Detroit has elected its first openly gay city council president, former television journalist Charles Pugh. This says a lot about a town whose culture is weaved with churches, whose leaders preach fiery homophobic rhetoric. Perhaps "the D," with all it has been through over the past few years, is changing the way it thinks and will turn out to be the Renaissance City after all.

Finally, in a Buckhead vs. Bankhead nail-biter, Atlanta will have to wait another month to find out whether city councilwoman Mary Norwood or ex-state lawmaker Kasim Reed will become mayor. A win for Norwood would mark the first time the city would be run by a white mayor since before Maynard Jackson's election in 1973. To many it would also symbolically end a near-four-decade run of African American power, which transformed the city and arguably the surrounding southern United States.

And so ends the second act in a political opera filled with thrills and turns and romance and spaceships and droids. The next act comes next year, featuring Ewoks and Billy Dee Williams. Oh yeah, then there's the stupid prequels and stuff.