President Barack Obama proved victorious in 2012. In what was almost a repeat of 2008, he won every swing state of consequence: Virginia and Ohio. The pundits will laud his campaign, CNN will hotly debate the what ifs and Mitt Romney will gracefully, if disappointedly (although, if he was optimistic enough to hope for a victory, can we really be sympathetic?) retire to the quiet, comfortable life that being part of the aging 1 percent allows.

But American politics will continue onward. The former Republican standard-bearer will fade into obscurity, and in four years, his Democratic counterpart will probably follow a similar path, but the ideologies they embodied will continue on. This election was much more than Obama versus Romney. It was more than just liberals versus conservatives. Upon this election hinged the fate of the tea party and indeed the conservative and liberal movements. With Obama’s victory, the tea party has been silenced, and Democratic dominance has been assured until at least 2020.

Recessions are unpleasant. They deprive people of jobs, of income and of livelihoods; they make people dependent on the state in ways that they were not previously. Additionally, though this is often ignored by Joe the Plumber who suffers from them and the demagogue who plays upon them, they are cyclical. Ultimately, and regardless of auto bailouts, stimulus packages or multi-trillion dollar deficits, bad economic conditions will give way to good ones. In short, the economy was destined to improve regardless of who won.

Thus, the American recovery has been ongoing and, on the condition of the aversion of sequestration, guaranteed. Because of its sluggish nature, however, the argument that Americans are suffering more and the attack that the middle class is being buried was effective in this election cycle. Similarly, because of the gradual, inevitable improvement, whichever party won the White House in 2012 would receive credit for it. If that was the Republican Party, Romney’s extensive business experience would have informed his masterful command of the recovery, but because it was the Democratic Party that won, Obama’s perseverance and government intervention will have proved successful.

Because Obama has won, his ideology, and that of his party, has been guaranteed predominance. The Democrats do not control the House now, thanks to an overwhelming Republican majority stemming from the 2010 midterm elections, but in 2014, with the recovery obvious to everyone and attributed to Obama, they will come storming in. In 2016, with the American economy roaring once again, a Democratic president, be it someone as relatively moderate as Joe Biden or comparatively left-leaning as Martin O’Malley, will inevitably take office, and it will only be in 2018, when the recovery is over and other issues dominate the American political consciousness, that Republicans can hope to take over. From 2014-20, the Democratic Party will control the House, the Senate and the White House. Some might view it as compensation for the neo-conservative Bush years.

The tea party is doomed. Not only will Democrats be able to lay claim to the recovery successfully, but they also will be able to claim responsibility for the reduction of the deficit, thanks entirely to the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA). Only the Democrats will be credited with averting sequestration. Never mind that, were it not for the tea party wave of 2010, the BCA would never have been promulgated, and run-away spending without end would have continued to be the standard practice. Instead, the tea party will be remembered for being obstructionist, Todd Akin- and Richard Mourdock-supporting white, old, Christian men stuck in the ideals of the previous century.

Even if the Democrats squander the goodwill of the recovery, 2008-20 will be remembered as the Democratic era. Deserved or otherwise, praise will be heaped upon them for rescuing the economy and restoring America to unquestionable superiority. Conservatives will mourn, and liberals will rejoice. The tea party, deprived of the massive debt that gave it life and the old-school demographics that supported its social programs, will dissolve. And after 2020, a new, moderately progressive era of American politics will be inaugurated.

And it all began right here, right now, in the 2012 presidential election.