I'm seeing a lot of gloating along the lines of "Super-PACs spent all this money and they still lost, so ha ha, aren't they stupid?". No.

The implications of this are that Citizens United turned out to be a false alarm and we don't really need campaign finance reform. We shouldn't go there. The billionaires will just regroup and do better next time.

"The billionaire donors I hear are livid," one Republican operative told The Huffington Post. "There is some holy hell to pay. Karl Rove has a lot of explaining to do ... I don't know how you tell your donors that we spent $390 million and got nothing."....Rove was forced to defend his group's expenditures live on Fox News on Tuesday night, and will hold a briefing with top donors on Thursday, according to Politico.

This election was closer than it should have been, and the disinformation campaign funded by the Super-PACs was a large part of why. I'm not saying everyone who voted for Romney did so out of ignorance, but clearly these people did, and so does everyone who believes in "Obama phones" (incidentally, watch for the growth of this "Makers and takers" language, straight out of Ayn Rand). Fox News certainly contributes their share, but to really reach the people you need ads and direct mails and door to door efforts, and the Super-PACs funded that. So Karl Rove did his job, even if he skimmed off the top. Luckily, it wasn't enough, but that doesn't mean the money wasn't effective.