Obama's stunning turnaround:

CNN) — Voters who flocked to the Republican banner seven weeks ago are probably scratching their heads, wondering, "Who really won in November?" After handing the president and Congressional Democrats the worst drubbing in more than half a century, they can only watch in disbelief as President Barack Obama has reeled off a series of unexpected victories.
A new stimulus bill, repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," and now START — who would have believed that this shirt-tail session of Congress would have been so triumphant? They call it "lame duck" but it was anything but lame.

A surprisingly 'do something' Congress:

The outgoing 111th Congress is among the most productive in history, in spite of its reputation for gridlock and 13 percent approval rating. Democrats controlled the House and the Senate, and used their large majorities to push through landmark legislation with barely any GOP support.

The post-election lame-duck session — typically a mopping-up operation to get out of town — also made history, passing key pieces of legislation, often with greater input from Republicans than had earlier been the case. People can argue the merits of what Congress did, but it’s hard to quibble with the scope of the undertaking. Here are six of this Congress’s major accomplishments, in the order in which they were approved.

The president would defeat all of the potential challengers:

Already, the potential candidates are warily eyeing polls that suggest that it will be no easy task to knock off the president, despite the many political challenges he has struggled to overcome during the past two years.

A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that the president would defeat all of the potential challengers they listed, if the election were held today. And that was before the president’s recent string of accomplishments in the lame-duck session of congress — in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released on Wednesday, 56 percent of Americans said they support how Obama has handled the lame-duck.

Dan often speaks about the mouse (Obama) in a cage with a snake (the GOP). He says he has to close his eyes because the inevitable is about to happen, the mouse is only a moment away from destruction. But this time around the inevitable didn't happen. Even I'm a bit shocked at all of this, and so is the snake.