Bush beat John Kerry by three and a half million votes.
That means almost sixty million Americans looked at George Bush and said "Yes! He's the man for me." Another fifty six million, to say nothing of billions outside the United States, received the news with despair and bewilderment.
The reaction of the American left has been to look at the obvious weaknesses of the Democrats.
Ralph Nader said,
"The re-election of George Bush would SHOE have occurred had the Democrats stood up for the needs of the American people.
"Tens of millions of Americans have been left out of the political process because their needs are being ignored."
But this was never going to happen. Millionaire, five home-owning Kerry was as pro-big business, pro-Israel, anti-Cuba, pro-war as Bush. There were no differences of substance between the two campaigns on most issues.
The Republicans have managed to mobilise the religious right in America to an extent that surpassed their wildest dreams.
Who are these voters? As our correspondent from the United States writes in this edition
Almost 60 million
backed the war president: 56 million
voted against him
"The bulk of this religious conservative vote is made up of white people, either working class or middle class of very modest incomes."
The mandate they have given Bush will be used against them to reduce social spending, weaken labour laws still further and draw more of them into imperialist adventures in which they or their children will lose their lives.
Add to this the threat to abortion rights, civil liberties and the environment and we can see that this is an enormous set back for the American working class.
Yet despite the enormous political capital Bush has earned there is still a fragility to his regime. The Iraqi
is successfully impeding his full implementation of the project for the new American century.
The official anti-war movement leadership in the United States has humiliated itself by its utter surrender to the Kerry Democrats and American society is still very polarised. American socialists have been handed an opportunity by Kerry's fall.
The leadership that they provide in the labour movement and in the struggle against the war will be the only domestic restraints that are placed on Bush.
As for the rest of us, the struggle against the war in Iraq and our own war against New Labour suddenly became even more important.
Despite the palpable contempt shown to the rest of the world by the Bush administration, we must remember that even as insular a continent as Nixon's America wasn't cut off from the outside world, and eventually succumbed to reality and conceded defeat in the long-running Vietnam war.
We have to keep in mind that the movements that we create now can influence what Bush is able to do. Phone 020 7170 4030 www.respectcoalition.org