Facts speak for themselves.

The Democratic Party suffered in 2010 the greatest midterm defeat following a new president's election since 1922. Democrats, at this writing, dropped 64 seats in the House of Representatives, where they will now be in the minority, and 6 seats in the Senate, where they will continue to hold a slight edge. The Democratic defeat was historic by other measures: in House seats lost, whether in a presidential year (the most since 1948) or in a midterm election (the most since 1938).

Judging the Change

The midterm election is one of the distinctive features of America's constitutional system. By allowing an expression of voter sentiment separate from the presidential selection, midterms help supply the Congress with concrete political support for checking the president's power. A check of this kind seems to be exactly what the public had in mind in 2010, ending liberal hopes that Obama's presidency would inaugurate a "new" New Deal.

The comparison of Barack Obama to Franklin Roosevelt has been looming in the background for the past two years. Time magazine, on the cover of its 2008 post-election issue, superimposed Obama's head onto a memorable photo of FDR seated in his convertible following his 1932 landslide victory. The expectation was that Obama, like Roosevelt, would lead Democrats to further gains in the ensuing midterm, and then onwards and upwards to an era of Democratic dominance. The 2008 Democratic totals in Congress were taken to be a floor for the party's support, not a ceiling. "The future in America's politics," wrote Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, "belongs to Barack Obama's Democrats." Happy days were here again.

If 2010 represents the future in American politics, it is not the one progressives expected. This holds true not just for the Democrats' standing today at the national level, but at the state level, too, where Republicans gained control of at least seven new governorships and nineteen state legislative chambers, giving them their highest total of state legislative chambers since the 1920s. More importantly, the Republicans' renewed strength in the states gives the GOP an important edge in the crucial process of redistricting legislative seats, which begins next year. It was the perfect time for a surge.

President Obama and the Republicans did not agree on very much over the last two years, but on the question of what this election was all about there was not an inch of daylight between them-at least when the campaign began. The contest, as the president repeatedly proclaimed, was a judgment on "the change," referring to his whole domestic package of stimulus policies, health care reform, and, presumably, his proposals for increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Obama spoke of "guarding the change," and Republicans responded by echoing the sentiment, if not always the exact words, of House Minority Leader John Boehner: "Hell no." Herein lies the main line of political conflict for the period ahead. With the advancement of the president's progressive agenda by legislative (as distinct from administrative) means halted, Obama, now thrust into the role of "conservative," will be using every ounce of his powers to sustain the parts of his program that have been enacted, while the Republicans, as proponents of change, will be seeking to reverse many of them.

The Big Difference

The 2010 election was one of the most nationalized, some will say the most nationalized, midterm campaign in American history. With one exception (Joseph Cao of New Orleans), every Republican competing for national office, from Hawaii to New Hampshire, ran against the Obama agenda and made it the centerpiece of his or her campaign. The president, who was in full campaign mode for months, joined the fray, defending his agenda while excoriating its "enemies." Only some Democrats, sensing the ship to be sinking, tried to "localize" their contests-not because the politics of 2010 really were local, but because they were not. This tactic worked in some of the Senate contests, like Delaware and Nevada, where the Republican candidates proved to have special vulnerabilities.

The 2010 campaign was also highly personalized, although not in the usual sense of focusing on the president's character (as, for example, in the 1998 midterm election, which turned on Bill Clinton's impending impeachment). "Personalized" in 2010 meant instead focusing on Obama's policies and his continued boasts of having made "historic changes." Even Republicans' frequent invocation in their ads of the other Democratic leaders-the smiling Nancy Pelosi and the dour Harry Reid-became in the end a way of speaking about Obama's change. All this fit with the president's own evident comfort level in placing himself conspicuously front and center. Although he made a point in his 2008 convention acceptance speech in Denver of telling Americans (and the world) that "it's not about me"-a phrase he has repeated frequently since-there must be some reason why he has had to issue the disclaimer so often. Last January the president reassured a few nervous congressional Democrats that any fears of another Republican Revolution were unfounded because the "big difference" between 1994 and 2010 "is that you've got me."

This slight to Bill Clinton highlights one of the most fascinating rivalries of modern American politics. Going back to the start of the 2008 campaign, Obama knew that he could only defeat Hillary by, in effect, defeating Bill; the original meaning of "change" was change from the Clintons. Bill Clinton in turn chafed at Obama's oblique criticisms and was visibly dismayed at the prospect of being replaced as the brightest star in the Democratic Party's firmament. The former president's reputation took a nosedive after he imploded during the South Carolina primary contest, accusing Obama of playing the race card. Not only did Clinton, America's "first black president," have to bide his time and cede the spotlight to Obama, America's second black president, but he was virtually forced to hide from public view after the election when he was appointed as a U.N. envoy. But the worm has turned this year, and as Obama's approval ratings went down, Clinton's popularity-especially among Democrats-went up, proving that the self-described "comeback kid" has had as many lives as Freddy Kruger. Being practical politicians, Clinton and Obama understood the advantage both to their principles and to themselves of working together. Clinton was almost as much in evidence during the 2010 campaign as Obama, going to places where the latter was not welcome. Now, in the wake of the midterm election, which overshadows Clinton's own historic drubbing in 1994, many are wondering whether Obama will be studying Clinton's 1995 playbook in hopes of a political recovery next year.

Rendering a Verdict

Because midterm elections take place in distinct races-472 of them this year-rendering a national verdict involves administering a very rough justice. In the House, the sins of progressive Democrats were visited on Democrats of a more moderate disposition. Huge numbers of these Democratic "blue dogs" were defeated. There was something poignant, too, in watching these foot soldiers in the Obama-Pelosi army being mowed down in droves, in many cases having been denied funding from national party headquarters. Meanwhile, most of the staunchest progressives, running often in Democratic redoubts, escaped to live another day, including Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank. A few of the old venerables, like committee chairs Ike Skelton (Armed Services) and John Spratt (Budget) were not so fortunate. Because there is little honor and less pleasure in serving in the House minority, it would not be surprising if a few progressives decided to avail themselves of Congress's generous retirement provisions. About the only solace these House liberals can take is that so many moderates were ousted that there is little danger of recrimination within the Democratic caucus. Nancy Pelosi will remain as leader of the party.

A number of analysts, anticipating the need to soften the blow against the Democrats, began arguing in October that the 2010 election was about generalized anger directed at incumbents because of economic conditions. No doubt there was some anger, which naturally fell on the party that, given its extraordinary majority, had full responsibility for running the show in Washington. In the Republican Party, too, there was more than the usual pressure exerted against incumbents early on, coming from a vast, energetic new Tea Party. (Two Republican Senate incumbents, Robert Bennett of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, lost primary contests—though Murkowski appears poised to hold onto her seat through a write-in campaign—and a number of establishment candidates running for GOP nominations, including Charlie Christ in Florida and Mike Castle in Delaware, were defeated.) But when it came to the final election, the story in the House was not one of incumbents losing, but of Democratic incumbents losing. All but two Republican incumbents were re-elected, while more than 50 Democratic incumbents met their political maker. In the Senate, every Republican incumbent who was nominated was re-elected, while two of the Democrats' finest, Russ Feingold and Blanche Lincoln, went down.

The results of the 2010 election changed the landscape of American politics. In viewing the national electoral map of House seats, it is as if someone came in overnight and redid the whole canvas, changing huge swaths of blue to red, especially in the vast area between the coasts and-adding to the impression of Republican dominance-in non-urban districts, which cover much larger geographic areas. Republicans have their largest majority in the House since 1948. And the political reality is even redder than it looks, since a number of the blue dogs who did survive, having observed their colleagues' cruel fate, will now be less likely to sit and stay at the president's command. In the Senate, one new Democrat, West Virginia's Joe Manchin, was elected by firing a shot in a campaign commercial at President Obama's cap-and-trade policy, and a large number of the 23 Democratic senators up for re-election in 2012, especially those who come from redder states, have taken note. Although the House Democrats come January will be a more progressive lot, with a small but helpless contingent of surviving blue dogs, the Senate is apt to be very different. Some Democrats may look to "do business" with Republicans, although there appear to be too few moderate Democrats to mount a sustained opposition against Obama from the center. If the president faces pressure from within his party, it is more likely to come from progressive intellectuals and bloggers outside of Congress. Given where the center of American politics now is located, such posturing will be of no real significance.

To be sure, a "landscape"-a term that once carried the implication, if not of permanence, then at least of some duration-is not all that it used to be. Like the modern construction projects that turn a barren lot into a plush green field in a day, the contemporary political scene now lends itself to more rapid reconfigurations. The nation has been living through a period of its greatest partisan fluctuations, with party control of each of the elected institutions-the presidency, the House, and the Senate-swinging back and forth at least three times since 1990. Every midterm since 1994 has been highly nationalized, by historical standards; a result not only of huge events-the first health care reform proposal (1994), the looming impeachment (1998), the 9/11 attack and the prospect of war in Iraq (2002), the Iraq War (2006), and now Obama's "change" agenda (2010)-but also of sharpening party conflicts that draw clearer divisions on national issues. Congressional elections seem to have entered new territory.

In fact, 2010 is the closest the nation has ever come to a national referendum on overall policy direction or "ideology." Obama, who ran in 2008 by subordinating ideology to his vague themes of "hope" and "change," has governed as one of the most ideological, partisan presidents. Some of his supporters like to argue in one breath that he is a pragmatist and centrist only to insist in the next that he has inaugurated the most historic transformation of American politics since the New Deal. The two claims are in tension. Going back to 2009's major political contests, beginning with the governors' races in Virginia and New Jersey and the Senate race in Massachusetts, the electorate has been asked the same question about Obama's agenda and has given the same response. The 2010 election is the third or fourth reiteration of their negative judgment, only this time delivered more decisively. There is only one label that can describe the result: the Great Repudiation.

Explanations

What accounts for the great repudiation? It is not always easy to arrive at a genuine explanation by listening to political actors. Their job is to offer explanations that serve their party's (or their own) future political prospects. It is only by coincidence that their accounts resemble the truth.

Thus the ballots had hardly been counted in 2010 before the president and his allies were shifting the narrative, embracing a Beta version to serve as the post-election explanation. Instead of the election being a fair and clear judgment on "the change," it was now said that the American people never understood the real issues. Part of the reason was a Republican campaign of misinformation, aided not just by huge sums of money (overall, Democrats spent as much as Republicans), but by the influx of "secret money," which buys more. Another reason offered was a failure in communication. President Obama was working so hard to address the nation's problems that he neglected to devote sufficient time and attention to explaining his policies to the public. The election outcome was all the result of a misunderstanding. If there was one substantive mistake to which the president admitted, it was that he had unwittingly fallen victim to a massive intelligence error. Obama was shocked to discover that-contrary to the reports of our government agencies and to the assurances of his brains trust-the SRPs (Shovel Ready Projects) he had promised didn't exist.

But the main Democratic explanation going forward has taken a different tack, denying that the election ever had anything to do with "change." It was instead all about the economy. The stimulus bill, alas, did not stimulate quite as promised. So the administration now claims that there was no fix possible for the economy, in the sense of being able to achieve a recovery as fast as Americans came to expect. The blame rightly belongs to the previous administration, although President Obama now understands that pressing this argument, a year and half in office, looks petulant. The new line is therefore simply to blame "the economy," as if it were an alien force dropped in from the outside, with no connection to his policies. The economic crisis, previously viewed as an indispensable ally in helping enact the president's agenda, now appears as a malevolent agent, and a perversely ill-timed one at that, since, as Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker explained, "the longest and deepest mass suffering" of the Great Recession, "has occurred with Obama in the White House." The notion that "the economy" is an actor in its own right, impervious to the change, has led some analysts to float the strange argument that Republicans should have won more convincingly than they did.

The real purpose of this explanation is to limit this election's meaning in a way that leaves the president and his agenda untouched. The election was voters' anguished response to the economy-nothing more. It was the Great Protest, not the Great Repudiation. This position, which Obama embraced in his post-election news conference, allows him to join up with the spirit of the election and participate in its message. He will now concentrate on the economy like, dare one say, a laser beam.

A Deeper Concern

Republicans have agreed on the economy's importance as part of the explanation for their victory. Yet in their account the anemic recovery is not unrelated to the core elements of Obama's "change." The president failed to appreciate what generates productive wealth, which comes not from bigger government and more spending but from the activity of private businesses and entrepreneurs. Economic "philosophy" in this large sense was in fact the main voting issue in this election. It was for this reason, too, that Obama's "populist" appeal against Big Banks, Wall Street, insurance companies, and the wealthy gained so little traction. Though most Americans-including many on the Right-were angry at "Big Business" and Wall Street, many also became convinced that Obama's populism struck squarely at the sources that generate wealth. Even Obama's plan to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, considered by White House advisors to be a sure-fire winner as an electoral issue, made little headway. The economic question in the campaign went back to the 2008 exchange between Barack Obama and Joe the Plumber. This time, however, Joe seemed to have the upper hand.

For many Republicans, and especially the Tea Party movement, the economic issues were linked to a deeper concern. The size of government and the extent of the federal debt represented not only a burden on future generations and a threat to American power, but also a violation of the spirit and letter of the Constitution. The Tea Party, in particular, with its Jeffersonian ideas, has reintroduced the Constitution into the public debate, a place that it has not held in the same way for over a century. This theme is what connects the Tea Party to the American tradition and makes their concerns matters of fundamental patriotism. The stakes in the 2010 election for these voters went far beyond economic questions, and for Democratic leaders to reduce everything to frustrations about "the economy, stupid" represents a final act of belittlement.

There was an additional factor in this electoral outcome, then, that was hardly noted or tested in the polls. It was a cultural clash between an elite and much of the public, between liberal intellectuals and the Obama Administration on the one hand, and the Tea Party activists on the other. The one has shown disdain and the other has responded with indignation. It is impossible, then, to say that Barack Obama was not a major factor in this election, for when he was not himself the leader he became the frequent enabler of this dismissal of middle America. That Obama would have to descend from the lofty heights that he inhabited during the campaign and after his election was something that no sane observer-and no doubt Obama himself-could fail to have foreseen. But this loss of bloated charisma has never been the real problem. It has instead been his demeanor as president. Obama modeled himself on Abraham Lincoln, and it is painful in retrospect to draw the contrast in how they have behaved. One showed humility, the other arrogance; one practiced sincerity, the other hypocrisy; one made efforts at cultivating unity, the other seemed to delight at encouraging division; and one succeeded in becoming more and more a man of the people, while the other, despite his harsh populist appeals, has grown more distant.

Moderation, No Virtue

Elections in America serve two functions: a "formal" function of appointing the personnel for constitutional offices, which takes place in every election; and an "informal" function of signaling what the people want, which takes place only in certain elections, when national public sentiment has congealed into a common message or theme. The situation in Washington reflects a conflict stemming from the results of these two functions. On the formal side, the array of forces puts neither party in full control. Democrats hold the presidency, Republicans now firmly control the House, and the Senate will likely swing in ways no one can foresee. The Democrats, who now derive their power from this formal situation and rely on officials chosen in elections conducted two and four years ago, will emphasize their offices' constitutional authority. They represent for the moment the conservative position. On the informal side, Republicans boast not just of their seats and numbers in Congress, but of the majority's weight and power as expressed in the clear message delivered on Election Day. This claim cannot, of course, cancel the formal array of power-we are a nation governed by laws and institutions-but there is nothing amiss in reminding those in office that they cannot stray too far, too long from the majority's wishes without straining a democratic system's authority. Although the informal function should not be overvalued, it should not be undervalued either.

The Republicans' case, resting on this informal claim that can always be disputed, is already under assault. Along with the Democrats' open campaign to persuade the public that the election did not mean what Republicans thought it did, there is an allied effort underway, far more subtle, to undermine and weaken the GOP position. It comes from a group of self-proclaimed wise men who present themselves as being above the fray. These voices, acting from a putative concern for the nation and even for the Republican Party, urge Republicans to avoid the mistake of Obama and the Democrats of displaying hubris and overinterpreting their mandate. With this criticism of the Democrats offered as a testimony of their even-handedness and sincerity, they piously go on to tell Republicans that now is the time to engage in bipartisanship and follow a course of compromise. The problem with this sage advice is that it calls for Republicans to practice moderation and bipartisanship after the Democrats did not. It is therefore not a counsel of moderation, but a ploy designed to force Republicans to accept the overreaching policies of the past year-and-a-half. It is another way to defend Obama's "change." If Republicans are to remain true to the verdict of 2010, the message of this election cannot be merely containment; it must be roll back.

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For Correspondence on this essay, click here.