Not quite understanding why most seem to be hailing Lebanon vote as victory for moderation - doesn't the Lebanese vote always break down ethnic/religious lines and isn't that essentially what happened here again? Christian, Druze, Shiite and Sunni all vote according to their respective sympathies and you end up with a balance of power roughly as what it is now - and then I remember reading something about how the gerrymandered representational system in Lebanon tends to skew results in an artificial way which makes it difficult to render a definitive opinion on what the vote actually means. I think because Hezbollah is now more politically relevant and people tend to fear them coming to power that this causes people to view the results in a way that does not accurately reflect the reality on the ground: turnout was only 55% which may not matter in a 'stable' society but I think probably does in one rife with thorny divisions; people continue to vote along confessional lines - results are in many ways preordained; Shiite influence is growing; Hezbollah has the only viable military force and will remain a player; Hezbollah does not necessarily want to 'win' - they may feel that demographics will eventually do that for them; Iran and Saudi Arabia are big proxy players, but because Iran backs Hezbollah and Hezbollah has the military heft, Iran wins.
I'm not seeing the cause for optimism here. People fear Hezbollah, Hezbollah 'lost' and so people want to view that as a hopeful sign - but once you remove the biased emotion of fear, the facts on the ground don't really justify the optimism.
update: essay on FP website by someone who actually knows what they're talking about on this subject essentially agrees with my take: election went pretty much as one would have expected, the dynamics remain much the same; there was no 'Obama effect'; it's inaccurate to say Hezbollah 'lost' simply because they may not have done as well as some were predicting.
