here's where I have ended up:
They had the numbers from not only the public polls but their internal polls and must have known the real facts yet they could not accept them. Why?
I think it's that they did not believe the American people would vote in great numbers again for Obama partly due to the depressed turnout in 2010 but even more because they refused to accept the American public were going to vote for President Obama as their preferred President.
I think they had talked themselves into believing the American public voted for Obama in 2008 as some kind of 'grand experiment', the election of the first African-American for President, they delusionally thought the American public would 'regain their senses' and turn back the clock to more traditional (racist) ideas. They were SO wrong and that is why they are in such a frenzy. The very plank of their party, their basest beliefs have been proven to be irrevocably and profoundly wrong.
In one way, this election was more important, more powerful than the 2008 one, in that it affirmed the American people WERE voting for Barrack Obama, both in 2008 and again in 2012, because of what he stood for, because they trusted him, believed he does have their best interests at heart.
I could be dead wrong on this but this, to me, is the only thing that might make sense.