I would make the case that the shifting control of the Senate was nothing more than a normal course of events completely disconnected from any politics. The party in the White House typically does poorly in a midterm election like this, and there was an added GOP advantage simply because the Democrats had to defend far more seats than the Republicans in this particular Senate cycle.
I might also brush off a GOP gain of 15+ seats in the House as a function of similar historical trends.
What can't be overlooked, though, is the shift at the state level. The real indication of a political sea-change is that the incumbent Republican governors were re-elected in eight of the nine states that Obama won twice (which makes the lone exception -- Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett -- a particularly miserable loser). You can add to that the shocking Republican victories in Marxist states like Massachusetts, Maryland, and even Obama's home state of Illinois.
It's obvious to me that the Democrats are in this situation because Barack Hussein Obama is about as popular as Ebola right now.
Much of what we think we know about the meaning of an election comes from our time horizon. Like the chart of a stock or a graph of global temperatures purporting to show global warming, the value of the graph depends on the validity of the time axis.
We can regard this election as a change of direction for the electorate or we can extend the time axis and say that we are looking at a hiccup in a jagged chart but whose definable direction over time is perceptively down for Republicans. In other words, demographics is destiny subject only to impermanent accidents or hiccups along the way resulting from the charisma of the candidate or a combination of circumstances.
The real problems of the conservative movement are certainly not solved by this election because they are not caused by elections. Our problem is the culture which starts literally in kindergarten and extends through postgraduate academia, infests the media, and even taints our churches. Until we find a way to cope with a fifth column in our culture, the excrescences of The Frankfurt School, we will continue to slide down the demographic curve.
It's obvious to me that the Democrats are in this situation because Barack Hussein Obama is about as popular as Ebola right now.
While this is true, and it certainly played its part, I think there are dramatically more fundamental reasons at play, as VDH identified. Ignoring all of the scandals and plenty of other reasons to vote the bums out, 0bama and his merry band of Marxists lost because they "chose not to defend the administration's record of the last six years." (i.e. they COULDN’T)
• On foreign policy, no democrat chorus seconded Obama's 2013 claim that this chaotic period in world affairs has been the most stable time in recent memory.
• No democrat senator insisted that Obama's Russian reset had calmed Vladimir Putin.
• democrats did not argue that Obama had rightly distanced the U.S. from Israel.
• No democrats pointed to the Middle East -- the Iranian bomb-making efforts, the civil war in Syria, the collapse of post-surge Iraq, the rise of the Islamic State -- to confirm Obama's diagnosis that these were mostly manageable problems?
• No democrat candidates ran on their own prior overwhelming support for the Affordable Care Act, which passed without a single Republican vote?
• No democRAT stated that at some future date, Obamacare, as promised, really would lower premiums and deductibles, reduce the deficit, expand coverage, and ensure that people could keep existing plans and doctors?
• No democrat made the re-election argument that stimulatory policies of adding $7 trillion in new debt, maintaining continual near zero-interest rates and approving a $1 trillion stimulus had led to a robust recovery after the end of the recession in mid-2009?
• No democrat claimed positive changes in federal agencies and bigger government -- at least those other than the IRS, NSA, ICE, GSA, VA, NASA, the Justice Department and the Secret Service?
• If democrats didn't wish to run on their party's past record, why didn't they promise to fulfill Obama's incomplete agenda that was short-circuited by the loss of the House in 2010? In 2009, the democrat House had voted to pass a cap-and-trade bill under Obama's direction, but it was never passed by the Senate. Why didn't democrat candidates vow that they would see it through in 2015? Or promise to reject the Keystone XL Pipeline for good? Or vow to keep with the Obama agenda of curbing new federal leases for gas and oil exploration?
• Under Obama, an effectively open border, coupled with de facto amnesties, has led to massive new influxes of foreign citizens at the southern border. Why didn't democrat promise to continue Obama's laissez-faire immigration policy?
• Couldn't the democrats have pointed to Obama's handling of the Ebola crisis, lauding his choice of Washington, D.C., fixer Ron Klain as a medically savvy, hands-on Ebola czar? Or to the president's dynamic air war against the Islamic State?
"democrats understandably chose to ignore both what they had voted for in the past and what they were likely to support in the future."
And the voting public, even those educated in government schools, said GET LOST!
