That was the night when Barack Obama racked up 365 electoral votes, made once-unthinkable inroads into Republican redoubts like Indiana and North Carolina and racked up a higher share of the popular vote than any Democratic presidential nominee since Lyndon Johnson.
But it was also the night that his Democratic Party, riding Obama’s coattails and a two-year wave of discontent with Republican rule, secured overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Congress. And it came less than two months after a Wall Street meltdown turned what was already a recession into something approaching a depression. This formula—new president plus massive Congressional majorities plus dreadful economy—is the perfect recipe for what the Massachusetts result signified: a brutal midterm election cycle for the White House.

No matter what the economic or political climate, midterm elections are almost always unpleasant for new presidents. Only twice in the modern era has the White House’s party not lost seats in one, and both examples are easily explained: In 1998, Bill Clinton’s Democrats picked up a few seats because of an impeachment backlash, and 2002 George W. Bush’s G.O.P. capitalized on lingering 9/11 trauma. The only variable has been degree.

It was easy to ignore all of this back in November ’08, on that magical night when hundreds of thousands exultant Obama supporters celebrated his historic triumph in Chicago’s Grant Park. Or in the early months of 2009, when the new president set to work with a vast majority of his countrymen and –women expressing affection for and faith in him. Back then, it was tempting to imagine that it might somehow stay that way for years to come—that Mr. Obama and the Democrats would sustain their sky-high popularity while the G.O.P. slipped further and further from relevance.

Tempting, perhaps. But totally and completely unrealistic.

The slide that has accompanied the end of Mr. Obama’s first year in office—and that led directly to his party’s loss in Massachusetts—was inevitable.

The reason is simple: Voters live in the present tense.Of course, this isn’t the media’s favored narrative—nor that of all Republicans and most Democrats. Instead, we hear that the president pushed too hard and too fast on health care, or too slowly and too incrementally. And that he lost the middle by pushing for a stimulus plan that was too bloated to accomplish any good, or one that was too small to produce real growth. And that he failed to deliver on his promise of post-partisanship and cooperation, or that he sold his progressive base out by pursuing too much compromise with moderates and Republicans. And on and on.

This is the season for theories on “Why Obama Is Failing,” and every media outlet, politician, interest group and pundit has an explanation—one perfectly tailored to whatever broader agenda the person or group in question is pushing. But reality is so much simpler: When economic anxiety is rampant and one party controls the government, that party will take a beating at the polls.

Just consider the case of the last president who dealt with double-digit unemployment. He came into office much the way Mr. Obama did—elected in a landslide and with stunning Congressional coattails. He promised transformational change and the country desperately wanted to believe in him. But the economy, bad to begin with, deteriorated even further in his first two years, and his party suffered a bloodletting in his first midterm election.

The press, the opposition and even members of his own party said the same things about him then that we’re starting to hear about Mr. Obama now—that he’s in over his head, that the country has turned on him, that he’s a sure one-termer. And then, two years after that midterm, Ronald Reagan won 49 states and was reelected to a second term.

This will be a very rough year for Mr. Obama and his party. Massachusetts is likely a small taste of what’s to come in November. Just try to keep the Reagan example in mind.
                                                                                                                                                                              skornacki@observer.com

But Mitch McConnell didn’t say that. Harry Reid did. And instead of calling for his head, every big-name Democrat and every big-name civil rights leader—to say nothing of Obama himself—is rallying around the Senate’s Democratic leader.

It’s a double standard, yes. But it's only fair. Call it the price of being on the wrong side of history.

Few appreciate it today, but once upon a time, it was actually the Grand Old Party, much more than the Democratic Party, that led the way on racial issues. In the decade after the Civil War, for instance, it was the Radical Republicans in Congress who pushed through expansive new laws that significantly improved the status of blacks in the old Confederacy. And it was racist Southern Democrats who wiped out that progress with Jim Crow.

And it was those same white Southerners who, for nearly a century after the Civil War, accounted for the largest and most loyal component of the national Democratic Party. No matter what, the South could always be counted to support the party up and down the ballot. Even as Adlai Stevenson was being demolished by Dwight Eisenhower in 1952, he still snagged 70 percent of the vote in Georgia (and 65 percent in Alabama and 60 in Mississippi).

In those days, a politician expressing ugly, vile sentiments toward African-Americans was more than likely to be a Democrat.

But then something funny happened: the two parties switched roles—abruptly and permanently. The final straw was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, championed by a Southern Democratic president who, as he was affixing his signature on the bill, purportedly mused that he was signing his region away for a generation.

Prior to civil rights, the Democratic Party had been defined by an increasingly untenable alliance of ideological opposites—integrationist Northern liberals like Hubert Humphrey and Herbert Lehman teamed with Southern segregationists like Richard Russell and John Stennis. By embracing what Humphrey called “the bright sunshine of human rights,” Lyndon Johnson effectively chose the Northern wing over the Southern wing.

At the same time, Republicans were grappling with a similar identity crisis. Just as the Democrats moved left on civil rights in ’64, the G.O.P. veered sharply to the right—rejecting the legacy of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and even Eisenhower and embracing Barry Goldwater, a leading opponent of the Civil Rights Act, as its nominee.

The impact was immediate: Johnson won a smashing landslide that fall, racking up 61 percent of the vote nationally. But Goldwater swept the Deep South—59 percent in South Carolina, 69 percent in Alabama and a stunning 87 percent in Mississippi.

From there, a steady, decades-long transformation of the two parties ensued. The Republican Party, which had barely existed in the South prior to ’64, was flooded with disaffected segregationist Democrats—like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond. The godfather of the modern Mississippi Republican Party, Charles Pickering, left the Democrats in 1964 because the party’s national convention agreed to seat two black delegates.

National Republicans began catering to the aggrieved sentiments of white southerners (mindful, of course, of not seeming overtly racist). Richard Nixon built his presidency on his notorious “Southern strategy.” Ronald Reagan opened his general-election campaign in 1980 in Philadelphia, Mississippi—where three civil rights workers had been murdered just 16 years earlier—and won the white crowd over by declaring his belief in “states’ rights.” By 1983, when the Senate finally approved a federal Martin Luther King holiday (after a filibuster threat from Helms, who derided the civil rights hero as a “Communist”), 18 of the 22 no votes came from Republicans It is the descendants of those Southern segregationists (and some of the original segregationists themselves) who now form the backbone of the national Republican Party. And all too often, we are greeted with reminders that, while the rhetoric of their politicians may be toned down, the racial attitudes of many white Southerners remain troubling.

For instance, it was a white Southern Republican (Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland) who called Obama “uppity” in 2008. And a white Southern Republican (Mississippi’s Trent Lott) who infamously lamented “all of these problems over all these years” that resulted from Thurmond’s defeat in the 1948 presidential election, when he ran on a segregationist platform.

But the “controversy” over Obama’s birth certificate is most telling. A poll last summer found that nearly 90 percent of voters in the Northeast, Midwest and West believe that the president is an American citizen—while only 47 percent of Southerners do. One analysis of the survey concluded that more than 70 percent of white Southerners do not believe that Obama was born in the United States.

No, not all (or even most) Republicans are closet racists. And plenty of Democrats are. But it is the G.O.P. that has willfully built its modern foundation on the lingering racial and cultural resentments of the South, not the Democrats.

This is why Harry Reid is receiving a benefit of the doubt that wouldn’t be extended to a Republican leader under similar circumstances. There is no reason to believe that he was trying to send some kind of coded message to his party’s base. With a Republican, there would be.

On one level, you have to feel some sympathy for Ford: When he started out in politics, this is not where he thought he’d be as he neared his 40th birthday. 

When he was 26—and still in law school—his father, Harold Ford. Sr., decided to end his career in the U.S. House after 11 terms. Thanks to his name, the younger Ford had no trouble succeeding him. He then spent the next decade positioning himself to move up, routinely taking positions that put him at odds with the Democratic base (and grabbing the spotlight while doing so) in an effort to position himself for a statewide campaign—which he launched in 2006, when Bill Frist opted to retire from the Senate.

That Senate campaign—launched in an optimal national environment for Democrats—was supposed to be Ford’s big moment: The Democratic tide would lift him to a narrow victory, he’d become a national star in the Senate, and talk of a future White House bid would soon follow.

Too bad he lost to Bob Corker by 3 points. Not only did that defeat arrest Ford’s charmed political ascension, it also introduced him to a harsh reality: If he couldn’t win a statewide race in Tennessee in 2006, he probably wouldn’t be able to win there ever. That is even more true now, with Barack Obama’s presidency fostering an ugly and irrational backlash among many white Southerners that is, nonetheless, politically significant.

So he left Tennessee shortly after his defeat, grabbed the chairmanship of the Democratic Leadership Council (a perch that incubated ambitious political careers—two decades ago), and landed in New York, where he cashed in with Merrill Lynch—and got cozy with the money men and women—who, according to The Times, are now ready to back him for Senate.

In Senator Kirsten Gillibrand—who has so far failed to catch on with the public and her own party (did you see the poll that put her 13 points behind Bill Thompson?!)—Ford spies an opportunity to jump-start his career and revive his lofty political dreams. He can beat her in the primary (or so he thinks), coast in the general election, and claim a seat that will be his for as long as he needs it (i.e., until it’s time for a national campaign).

Which brings us to the “misguided political calculation” aspect of this story. Here we have an amusing irony: One by one over the last year, potential Gillibrand opponents who might actually have had a chance to beat her in a primary have backed out of the race. Meanwhile, the one guy who does seem interested in taking her on—Ford—is actually one of the few Democrats who would is horribly positioned to oppose Gillibrand. 

No, this isn’t because of the carpetbagging factor—not in New York, the state that embraced Bobby Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. (Although it’s worth noting that candidates who’ve held office in one state before running in another have a dreadful track record: think James Buckley in Connecticut, Bill Brock in Maryland, Bob Smith in Florida, Bill Weld in New York, and so on.)

The bigger—and simpler—problem with a Ford campaign is that instead of exploiting Gillibrand’s chief vulnerability, it would actually mask it. Gillibrand is vulnerable within her party mainly because liberal-minded voters in and around New York City don’t like the Blue Dog streak she showed as a House member—and are just as turned off by her sudden, poll-driven embrace of liberalism when she was appointed to the Senate. In other words, there’s a massive, gaping opening to her left.

But Ford, if anything, falls to Gillibrand’s right on the political spectrum. In Tennessee in ’06, he labeled himself “pro-life” and highlighted all of the abortion restrictions he favored. He voted to ban gay marriage—and to restrict benefits to same-sex couples. He voted for the Iraq war and defended it long after it became clear what a blunder it was. He favored shielding gun manufacturers from lawsuits—hear that, Mayor Bloomberg?—and voted for the bankruptcy bill in 2005.

The wink-wink defense from Ford’s fans is that he was just doing what any Tennessee Democrat with statewide ambitions would have done—and that as a New York politician, he’d be free to chart a more progressive course. Which is exactly what Gillibrand’s supporters said about her when David Paterson plucked her from the conservative 20th District and dropped her in the U.S. Senate. At best, Ford would be left mimicking the same ideological transformation that Gillibrand has been trying to pull off. Except that she has a one-year head start on him. 

In fact, a Ford candidacy might actually bolster Gillibrand’s credentials with the Democratic base. Compared to, say, Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, progressives see Gillibrand as an insincere chameleon. But next to Ford, she might start to look like the second coming of Bella Abzug. 

And that’s not even mentioning Ford’s Wall Street baggage. Taking a sabbatical from politics to make oodles of cash while cultivating friends among the plutocracy used to be a decent career move; it sure seemed to work for Rahm Emanuel. Today—after the crash and after the bailouts—it’s poisonous. Ford’s Merrill Lynch gig—and his coziness with what is now one of the most reviled crowds in America—would be the gift that keeps on giving for Gillibrand (who, don’t forget, is armed with a very deep bankroll). 

Ford may be frustrated by his stalled political career. But a lopsided loss to Gillibrand would only make things worse for him—much worse. Here’s guessing he’ll let the air out of this trial balloon soon.

But from a personal standpoint, his decision is rather surprising. Dodd, don’t forget, is the son of former Senator Thomas Dodd, whose career—and life—ended in public shame, with a Senate censure leading to his defeat in 1970 and his death following a few years later.

Young Chris Dodd ran his father’s final, doomed campaign and watched with awe and pride as the old man defied his tormenters and went down fighting. Even as scandal swallowed him up this past year, it seemed a given that Chris Dodd would follow that example and stay in the race to the finish line.

So why is he giving up—and giving his foes a chance to gloat?
   
Party loyalty may be a factor. One of Tom Dodd’s motivating factors for gutting it out in ’70 was his sense of betrayal by his fellow Democrats—those in the Senate who rebuked him and those in Connecticut who moved to deny him re-nomination. He ended up running as an independent in the fall, finishing a distant third but siphoning just enough votes from the Democrats to elect Republican Lowell Weicker.

This is not how Chris Dodd has been treated this past year. Yes, he’s been facing a primary challenge from a little-known businessman named Merrick Alpert, but it was going nowhere. All of the big players in the Connecticut Democratic Party were sticking with him, and the nomination was his for as long as he wanted it. National Democrats—publicly, at least—were just as supportive. Barack Obama headlined a Dodd fund-raiser not long ago, national donors rallied to his side, and the D.S.C.C. was prepared to pour serious money into his effort.

Mind you, that doesn’t mean that party leaders in Washington wanted him to stick around. By last month, it was obvious that Dodd was a dead candidate walking and that no amount of campaign cash would be able to undo the damage of the past year. Connecticut voters had made their minds up about Dodd and tuned him out.

But by offering vehement public support to Dodd, Democrats bought themselves space to maneuver behind the scenes. Recent reports suggested that the White House was. But privately urging Dodd to quit. Many of his old friends on Capitol Hill—politely and respectfully—were probably delivering the same message.

And for good reason: Connecticut is a state Democrats shouldn’t have to worry about in a Senate election. Since Joe Lieberman ousted Weicker in 1988, the G.O.P. hasn’t come close to winning a Senate race in the state (unless you count Lieberman’s 2006 re-election). But with Dodd running, Democrats were going to have to spend a fortune on a race—money that they’d much rather spend in swing states like Ohio and Colorado—they were going to lose anyway. Now, they can replace Dodd with a taint-free candidate, retain the seat, and spend their money elsewhere.

And who will that new nominee be? The right of first refusal will go to Richard Blumenthal, the state’s exceedingly popular attorney general. On the job since 1990, Blumenthal has the strongest poll numbers of any politician in the state and has been waiting—for years—for the right chance to move up. If he runs, the race will essentially end on the spot: No one will be able to touch him in a primary or in the general election.

It may be that Dodd is only exiting now because he and national Democrats have been given assurances by Blumenthal that he will run. Time will tell.

If Blumenthal were to pass, things could get tricky for Democrats. Presumably, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, an ambitious second-termer who unseated Republican Nancy Johnson in 2006, would be interested. But that would open up his Naugatuck Valley House seat, which in a year like ’10 could actually be winnable for the G.O.P. Or maybe Ned Lamont, who just jumped into the gubernatorial race last month, would reconsider and run for the Senate instead. Rosa DeLauro, the long-serving congresswoman from New Haven, could also be worth watching.

Whatever happens, though, Democrats are now very likely—if not certain—to hang on to Dodd’s seat, probably at very little expense. The ticking time-bomb that has been Dodd’s re-election campaign for his party for a year now has been defused.

But when it comes to gauging the political impact of the legislation that Obama now seems poised to sign early next year, the more apt comparison is to the budget that Clinton forced through Congress in the summer of 1993.

After all, Clinton's health care push stalled and died without a bill clearing a single congressional committee. There were no results for voters to judge - just failure for them to condemn (with Republicans, of course, egging them on). Obama and the Democrats, by contrast, are actually on the verge of enacting 2,000 pages or so of changes to the health care system. People will - eventually - feel an impact from this, a variable that never materialized in the Clinton years.

This is why Clinton's budget - which proved an unshakeable albatross for Democrats in the 1994 midterms, only to morph into an unadulterated political plus as the decade progressed - makes a better point of reference.

As with health care now, the budget represented Clinton's signature first-year effort - one that passed the House by a 218-216 count and the Senate on the strength of Vice President Al Gore's tie-breaking vote. In its first pass through the House this year, health care passed on a 220-215 vote, and it cleared the Senate last week without a single vote to spare.

And Clinton's budget attracted just as much Republican support as health care has this year - which is to say, none at all. In fact, Republicans in 1993 were in an almost identical political position - locked out of the White House for the first time in 12 years and facing imposing Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. Then, as now, they opted to play the obstructionist role.

In Clinton's budget, Republicans saw a particularly ripe target for the 1994 midterms. The new president had campaigned as a "New Democrat," a business-friendly moderate who'd pulled his party away from its tax-and-spend legacy. But his budget, which sought to tame the runway budget deficits of the late '80s and early '90s, raised taxes on upper-income earners. "The biggest tax increase in the history of the world!" is how Republicans portrayed it, to great effect.

When Gore cast his decisive vote in August '93, public sentiment had moved decidedly against the budget. Months of Republican attacks (and critiques from members of his own party, some of whom thought the package did too much and others who believed it did too little) had convinced the masses that Clinton's was simply a mess.

"I believe that hundreds of thousands of Americans will lose their jobs because of this tax bill," Phil Gramm, then a Republican senator with 1996 presidential aspirations, said at the time. "Three-and-one-half years from now, my guess is that the President will be one of them."

Republicans are now talking the same way about "ObamaCare," which, just like Clinton's budget, has dropped in popularity as the congressional process has played out.

"Politically, it's a big problem for [Democrats]," Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican Leader, said on Sunday. "They all kind of joined hands and went off the cliff together. Every single Democrat provided the vote that past it in the Senate."

McConnell and other Republicans are now promising to make health care a centerpiece issue in next fall's midterms - the same way that just about every Republican Senate challenger in 1994 reminded voters that his or her opponent had cast the tie-breaking vote for Clinton's budget (a claim that was technically true, since one more Democratic defection would have prevented Gore from casting the 51^st vote for it).

The Clinton experience suggests this isn't a bad strategy for the G.O.P. - for 2010 only. But after that, they'll begin to pay a price for their uniform opposition.

The Democrats who sided with Clinton in '93 tried to tell their constituents that they'd cast principled votes that would benefit the country in the long term. But the public was in no mood to hear it. They had already judged Clinton a failure and, to them, claims about the supposed benefits of his '93 budget were abstract; the economy barely seemed better than it had been when they'd elected him.

The story of Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who had been elected from a Republican-leaning district in suburban Philadelphia in 1992, is illustrative of this. After agonizing until the very end of the final House vote on the budget, she finally relented to White House pressure and voted for it, essentially providing the tie-breaking vote. As she did, Republicans in the chamber chanted, "Bye-bye, Marjorie!" And they were right: Margolies-Mezvinsky, despite her best efforts to persuade her constituents, lost her seat in '94.

Many other Democrats, of course, lost their seats in the G.O.P. revolution of '94 - including some who had tried to appease their constituents by voting against the budget. There were many reasons for the G.O.P. tide, but the budget was a big part of it; it helped Republicans convince the public that Clinton had betrayed the kind of change he'd promised in his '92 campaign - that he really was the taxer-and-spender he'd said he wasn't.

But then something funny happened: The long-term benefits that Clinton and the Democrats had promised came through. Deficits began to shrink. The markets found new confidence in the government and the U.S. economy. And the roaring '90s took off. None of the dire Republican predictions about lost jobs and recessions and depressions came true. Not even close.

By 1996, Clinton was able to run for re-election on the strength of what the '93 budget had delivered - and to taunt the Republicans (including his opponent, Bob Dole) for having been so afraid of it. The 379 electoral votes he won that year remain the most for any Democrat since L.B.J. in 1964.

Expect something similar to happen with health care. The benefits won't appear immediately. They'll actually be phased in over a period of years (too many years, probably). So the G.O.P. - just like with Clinton's budget - will have a field day in next year's midterms claiming that Obama and the Democrats just bankrupted the country for a bill that hasn't done any good. Democrats probably won't have much luck fighting back. Principled congressmen and senators who cast principled votes will probably lose their seats in 2010.

But then, as the bill is implemented in the years that follow, voters will realize the same thing they did in 1995 and 1996 - that the G.O.P.'s hysteria was just that. The overheated rhetoric that has marked this year's health care fight will come to look almost comically misguided. And Republicans, once again, will have found themselves on the wrong side of history.

We knew it was coming to this, too. There was a brief moment early this year when it seemed that David Paterson's poll numbers would level off in the magic zone - strong enough to keep Andrew Cuomo on the sidelines but weak enough to make him a very vulnerable incumbent in a general election - that would make a Rudy-for-governor campaign possible, if not likely.

Instead, Paterson's numbers freefell to lethal depths, where they've remained - cold and lifeless - for months now. One way or another, Cuomo will be the Democratic gubernatorial nominee next year - and, as Rudy has known all along, a campaign against Cuomo is a sure loser. Which is why the former mayor's summer and fall flirtations with the governor's race were so transparently hollow. The suspense wasn't over whether he'd run - it was over when he'd finally get around to announcing that he wouldn't.

That moment, it seemed, was about to arrive just before Thanksgiving, when the New York Times reported that Giuliani had decided to forgo a gubernatorial bid.

But Rudy wasn't ready to end the guessing game. He was getting too much out of it. It was good for his ego, good for business, and good for his efforts to pay down his White House campaign debt. Plus, you've got to imagine, he was irked beyond belief that his old nemeses - those pointy-headed do-gooder liberals at the Times - were the ones pre-empting his timeline.

So, almost as soon as the Times story appeared online, Rudy's camp threw another head-fake. He wasn't running for governor in '10, the line went - he was actually ready to run for the U.S. Senate against Kirsten Gillibrand, the appointed incumbent with lukewarm poll numbers. The Daily News bit - I mean really bit - and reported that he'd announce his candidacy "within 48 hours."

That was 792 hours ago. And counting. It was almost instantly clear that Giuliani - the same guy who got cold feet at the starting line against Hilary Clinton - was simply trying to buy time.

Sure, the Senate race itself was an eerily good fit for him: the year would be right (the Republican label will be less damaging to candidate in New York in 2010 than in any year since 1994); the opponent would be beatable (polls showed him besting Gillibrand), and the G.O.P. was aching for a high-profile candidate for the top of its ticket. By agreeing to run, Rudy would be a hero to Republicans across the state.

But the idea of Rudy as a senator never made much sense. He'd be 66 at his swearing-in, a freshman member of the minority party with an enemy in the White House. Clout, in the traditional sense, would be elusive. And the chamber's sluggish pace and the primacy of decorum would hardly suit his profane executive's temperament. Sure, he'd be a star -Senate Republicans would be happy to make him their public face, especially on national security - but, really, can you imagine Senator Giuliani in the last seat of the Judiciary Committee, patiently waiting for Al Franken to finish his allotted time?

Some wondered if running for the Senate in 2010 would be a springboard for Rudy to another White House effort in 2012. That, too, was tough to swallow. For one thing, the turnaround would be too quick - the G.O.P. field will already mostly be in place by the fall of '10. Numerous first-senators have run for president four years after their elections (Barack Obama in 2008, Bob Kerrey in 1992, Al Gore in 1988, to name a few) - but how many have run two years after winning their first term? It just doesn't happen.

More to the point, we're talking about the same man who in 2008 ran what is, statistically speaking, the most catastrophic presidential campaign in history - $57 million for one single convention delegate. Numerous candidates lose their first White House race and try again four years later - but all of them do so after running surprisingly well the first time. No one ever talked about John Connally or Phil Gramm running again.

Rudy actually provided a good indication of where his head is at a few weeks ago, when - while still officially considering his 2010 political options - he signed on as a security consultant for the 2016 Summer Olympics. It's safe to say that he'll make considerably more from than gig than he would as a U.S. senator - and that this matters to him.

So, except for those first few hours before Thanksgiving when we all wondered if the Daily News' story could possibly be true, ther Rudy for Senate drama has been even less suspenseful than the gubernatorial edition. The only question has been when he'd finally admit he wasn't running.

And today, at a midtown event with Rick Lazio (who once again will get to run the campaign Rudy passed on), he did that. In so doing, he leaves the state Republicans (if they were foolish enough to believe he was seriously interested in running for office next year) in a jam. With George Pataki almost certain to take a pass, the G.O.P. will lack a star in the two marquee races on next fall's ballot - this in a year in which they could actually do well with the right slate.

But, since 2010 stood as his last chance to run for office, there is a silver lining for Republicans and for all of us: at least Rudy will never put us through this again.

Not that he has much choice. Mr. Menendez, New Jersey's junior senator, chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which recruits and provides financial and political support for the party's U.S. Senate candidates. Optimism is part of the job.

But in 2010, Mr. Menendez will have to deal with some unpleasant realities that his predecessor, the irrepressible Chuck Schumer—who chaired the D.S.C.C. in the elections of 2006 and 2008, when Democrats picked up a combined 14 Senate seats and lost no incumbents—never faced.

For one thing, Democrats, with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress for the first time since 1994, are now in something of a defensive crouch. In '06 and '08 they were able to get by just pointing out the (many) shortcomings of George W. Bush. In '10, they'll have to show results.

And then there's history: Losses in a midterm election are almost automatic for the White House's party, which has avoided them only three times since the Civil War. Slippage is even more likely when you consider that the Democrats now (in theory) have 60 seats—the most for either party in 30 years.

The chairman's spin?

"We obviously have the wind not blowing at our back, but blowing a bit in our face," Mr. Menendez told the Observer this week. "But in the face of that, I'm encouraged by a couple of factors."

One of those factors is the high number of seats being vacated by Republican senators--six, three of them in states that Barack Obama won last year (New Hampshire, Florida and Ohio) and one in a state he nearly won (Missouri). The other two Republican vacancies are in Kentucky—a red state, but one where Tea Party fervor could propel Rand Paul, the fringe-y son of Ron, to the G.O.P. Senate nomination, thus creating an unexpected opportunity for Democrats--and Kansas, where Democrats really won't have a chance.

"The Republican retirements have created open seats and pick-up opportunities in five key states," Mr. Menendez said.

Obviously, if the Democrats can win two or three of these races, they'll stand an excellent chance of bucking history. But that's easier said than done. "I don't think the open seats are a given for them," Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said.

The main problem is that while Democrats fared well in states like Ohio and Florida in 2008, they did so under near-ideal conditions. The same formula that worked like a charm last year—pointing fingers and that old stand-by, blaming Mr. Bush—won't get them very far this time around. "When the climate is good for them, (Democrats) can win those states, but it's close," Ms. Duffy said. "In a bad climate, they're going to struggle--and things are not looking that good right now."

This leads into the second factor that Mr. Menendez stresses: Republican infighting. In numerous states, the favored candidates of the G.O.P. establishment are facing serious primary challenges, many of them fueled by the "back-to-basics" conservative revolution being pushed by South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

In the post-Bush G.O.P., where mass defections have vested the ideologically extreme base with outsize influence, some of these insurgents could actually win. And even if the insurgents don't win, they could still cause severe damage to the long-term viability of the establishment's preferred candidate.

"Their mainstream candidates--the candidates they'd like to see win--[are] moving more and more to the right, outside the scope of where you want to be in the general election, which is the center," Mr. Menendez said.

Ground zero for this phenomenon is Florida, where national Republican leaders were quick to line up behind Governor Charlie Crist, who had crafted a popular, moderate image, for the seat that Republican Mel Martinez vacated. But conservative activists have mobilized behind Marco Rubio, a charismatic former state House speaker who, according to the most recent Rasmussen poll, is now tied with the governor. Crist has responded by veering sharply to the right-creating hope among Democrats that Rep. Kendrick Meek, their likely candidate, can claim the middle no matter who the G.O.P. nominates.

Something similar may be brewing in New Hampshire, where the state's former attorney general, Kelly Ayotte, is the G.O.P. establishment's choice to run for Judd Gregg's seat. Ms. Ayotte leads Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes in polls—but she's also facing a potentially serious primary challenge from Ovide Lamontagne, a conservative who previously upset the establishment's candidate in the 1996 gubernatorial primary (and then went on to lose the general election in a rout).

G.O.P. primaries also loom in Ohio, Colorado, and Illinois, to name just a few. "These primaries complicate Republican plans because they soak up resources—a lot of money is being spent, [and] many of these candidates will have to spend millions in their primary," Mr. Menendez said.

Of course, while Mr. Menendez generally receives high marks for recruiting strong candidates, there are some potentially problematic primaries on the Democratic side.

The highest-profile of these is in Pennsylvania, where Arlen Specter, whose party switch gave Democrats their 60th Senate seat earlier this year, is being backed to the hilt by the White House and Mr. Menendez's D.S.C.C. But his lead over his primary challenger, Rep. Joe Sestak, keeps narrowing—and in general election match-ups with Republican Pat Toomey, it's a dead heat. Some wonder if national Democrats are propping up a dead horse.

"It's clearly a competitive primary," Mr. Menendez said. "But Arlen Specter is working incredibly hard. He has visited every county in the state, met with every Democratic Party from each and every one of those counties, has been a great addition to our caucus since he arrived...and I think he's going to do very well."

There's also potential primary trouble for Democrats in Ohio, where the D.S.C.C.'s preferred candidate—Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher—has failed to pull away from his intra-party foe; in Colorado, where appointed incumbent Michael Bennet is being challenged by a former state House Speaker; and in North Carolina, where the D.S.C.C.'s candidate has waffled on whether to run (he finally decided to do it) and now faces a primary against the better-known secretary of state.

And that's not even mentioning New York, where Kirsten Gillibrand has benefited from a concerted effort by the White House, the D.S.C.C. and Mr. Schumer to clear the primary field. And yet, she is still struggling in polls—even trailing. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson bests Ms. Gillibrand by a surprising 13 points. To put that in perspective, Mr. Thompson, who has not announced his plans for 2010, only ran even in an earlier poll against Tom DiNapoli, the unelected and largely unknown state comptroller.

"I'm not fazed by Kirsten's situation," Mr. Menendez said. "She's never run a statewide race. She was from upstate New York, ran in a congressional district, had no exposure statewide, and had no paid media statewide—or even in the heart of the most populous part of the state, New York City, like Thompson has. So I just view it quite differently."

There's also the matter of Connecticut, where nearly everyone agrees that five-term incumbent Chris Dodd can secure the Democratic nomination if he wants it-and that he'll lose in the fall if he does.

"This is an incumbent where, if you're giving (national Democrats) a little sodium pentothal, they would like him to get out of the race," Ms. Duffy observed.

Mr. Dodd has been beaten relentlessly for his closeness to the financial services industry and has emerged as a popular scapegoat-in Connecticut and nationally-for the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe and subsequent Wall Street meltdown. He's already spent heavily on ads and has been campaigning hard, but polls show him floundering, losing by double-digits to his most likely G.O.P. foe.

The obvious parallel is to Robert Torricelli, the former New Jersey senator who waged a re-election campaign against similarly dire poll numbers (and in a similarly blue state) in 2002—until party leaders, fearful of losing a seat they never should lose, convinced him to drop out five weeks before the election. In Mr. Dodd's case, Democrats would have an obvious replacement candidate—Connecticut's mega-popular attorney general, Richard Blumenthal—who would likely crush any Republican candidate.

Mr. Menendez, who was actually offered the chance to replace Mr. Torricelli on the ballot that year (and declined), said that "as far as I know, (Dodd) is absolutely intending to go all the way."

Still, he didn't speak of Mr. Dodd's continued candidacy as a foregone conclusion, saying, "I believe that at the end of the day, we will find that as Chris continues to work it, if he chooses to run, he'll be in position to stir a strong reservoir of support that has been developed over years...and can succeed if he chooses to do so."

All told, Democrats and Republicans will be defending 18 seats next November. Earlier this year, at the height of Mr. Obama's honeymoon (and with the G.O.P. brand in utter disrepair), Democrats giddily talked of adding to their Senate majority. Now, with unemployment stuck in double-digits and voters showing impatience with Mr. Obama and his party, Ms. Duffy said they'll do well to break even next fall—"and with every day that the environment does not improve for them, their chances of keeping 60 get worse."

Mr. Menendez, ever the optimist, said that Democrats will show results on health care and jobs over the next year—with no help from the Republicans. "And if we make the progress that we've already begun to see and that I believe we will make on health care reform, they're going to have been the party of opposition, not the party of any constructive ideas," he said. "And they will have ceded the most important issues to us."

"If you're 55 or 60 and you're without health insurance and you go in to try to buy it," Mr. Lieberman explained, "because you're older...you're rated as a risk and so you pay a lot of money."

Maybe you know how this one ended. About a week ago, desperate to win Mr. Lieberman's vote for health care reform, Senate Democratic leaders tentatively agreed to put the public option on the backburner and to replace it with....an expansion of Medicare that would allow uninsured Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 to buy into the program.

Mr. Lieberman responded by praising the Democrats for their willingness to compromise and hailed the proposed Medicare buy-in as a "giant step forward for uninsured Americans."

No, wait.

That's actually not what he said at all. He responded, in outrageous and thoroughly irrational fashion, by bashing the buy-in as a step toward socialism and announcing that he'd filibuster it.  Even more outrageous: the arcane rules of the Senate actually encourage Mr. Lieberman's mindless posturing.

The basics of the filibuster are familiar to most: A minority of senators can halt action on just about any legislation before the Senate by extending debate indefinitely, and the only way to stop them is by lining up 60 votes to cut off debate and proceed to a final vote.

Many people assume that the filibuster, as maddening as it is, is somehow sacred—a tool that is essential to the Senate's function and identity without which the delicate balance of power in Washington would be destroyed. But that's not really true. The rules of the filibuster have actually changed through the years, and so has its application.

It used to be that the filibuster was reserved for extraordinary circumstances. Unfortunately, for much of the 20^th Century, dozens of senators regarded pending civil rights legislation as an extraordinary circumstance. The filibuster, as Robert Caro details in "Master of the Senate," was instrumental in keeping even the most elementary civil rights initiative—banning lynching, for instance—from becoming law for nearly 100 years after the Civil War.

Otherwise, though, the filibuster wasn't commonly employed. The main reason for this was that both parties were, until relatively recently, ideologically fluid—racist Southern Democrats like Richard Russell shared a party label with liberal integrationists like Hubert Humphrey and Herbert Lehman, while right-wing Republicans like Homer Capehart (derided by Mr. Caro as "the Indiana Neanderthal") belonged to the same party as liberals like Margaret Chase Smith. Broad and loose bipartisan coalitions were common and alliances shifted frequently, an inhospitable climate for frequent filibustering.

Today, though, party label and ideology are one in the same—a transformation that owes itself, ironically enough, the civil rights triumphs of the 1960s, which gradually turned Southern Democrats into Republicans and (once the Southern-dominated G.O.P. took over Washington) pushed the North's "Rockefeller Republicans" into the Democratic fold. Bipartisanship in the Senate, as you might have noticed, is now a quaint anachronism.

This has made it easy to organize a filibuster. Both parties are now synched up with an ideology and cross-party alliances are rare, so senators no longer worry that joining a filibuster might alienate future legislative partners. Instead of being reserved for extreme circumstances, the filibuster is now an everyday tool of the minority party leader, who can rely—almost always—on the loyalty of his entire caucus.

The result is absurd. Sixty votes is now the de facto magic number even for relatively routine legislation—a ridiculously high barrier that forces unreasonable compromises. The need for 60 votes is the reason Democrats were forced to water down this year's stimulus bill—which, it's now widely agreed, wasn't big enough. And it's why Mr. Lieberman is now getting to live out his revenge fantasy, offering himself as the potential 60^th vote for health care reform while demanding one arbitrary concession after another.

Filibuster rules have changed before. 67 votes—a two-thirds majority—used to be the magic number to kill one. And reforms in the 1970s exempted any legislation that reduces the deficit from being filibustered. There have been other changes, too—and it's time for more.

In his latest "60 Minutes" sit-down on Sunday night, the president offered a preview of the triumphant spin we can expect if he is able to put his signature on a bill.

"Seven presidents have tried to reform a health care system that everyone acknowledges is broken," Obama said. "Seven presidents have failed up until this point. We are now that close to having a bill that does all the things that I said and most experts said need to be done when we started this process."

At a certain level, the White House's political reasoning makes sense. In 1994, the thinking goes, Bill Clinton and the Democrats paid dearly by claiming health care as their signature issue-and then failing to deliver any reform at all. Voters took the refusal of Congress to pass legislation as validation of the Republican attacks on "Hillary Care."

To avoid a repeat, then, Obama needs to be able to sign something-anything-called "health care reform." This is why, for example, the White House has offered only lip service on the public option. Sure, Obama would sign a bill with a public option, but if it's going to cause too much trouble in Congress, well, then forget it. This is their thinking, at least.

But there's a problem with it: Obama and the Democrats are going to pay a price next year for their health care push no matter what. The reason is simple: Even if reform passes, no voters will feel its positive effects by next fall.

Let's assume that a bill does make it through Congress (hardly a guarantee right now-especially with a certain Connecticut senator's latest declaration). We don't need to know the exact dimensions of the final deal to recognize that its major components won't begin to go into effect until several years from now. Subsidies to help individuals secure coverage, for instance, probably won't start being paid until 2013 or 2014.

>>READ: The Petty Revenge of Joe Lieberman

And for most Americans, there won't even be much change on the horizon, since Congress-again, assuming it passes anything-is poised to bar anyone who is now covered by group insurance from participating in the new insurance exchanges that would be set up. As The New York Times noted in a Sunday editorial, "[T]he vast majority of Americans, those covered by employer-sponsored insurance, would see little change or a modest decline in their average premiums under the Senate bill."

This is a recipe for a continuation into 2010 of the same health care debate we're having now- with Republicans free to make all of the hysterical, rejectionist claims they want, and a large chunk of voters (in the absence of direct evidence in their own lives that "ObamaCare" is working) receptive to it. The fact that Obama actually signed legislation won't move these voters; their lives won't feel any different-all they'll know is that Obama signed something very expensive and very flawed.

In a way, health care will be to the 2010 political debate what the stimulus has been to 2009's.

It's possible to make an academic argument that the $787 billion package passed last winter has been successful. The facts may well support such a claim. But it's much easier to make the emotional case against it, since the economy is still rotten and the administration (unwisely) forecast that the stimulus would keep unemployment below eight percent. It is now 10 percent. Most people do not feel that the stimulus has impacted their life in any way. All they know is that it cost lots of money.

This is how they will view health care in 2010. Democrats can talk over and over on the campaign trail about the historic bill they passed. The Republican argument will be more emotionally compelling: in the middle of an economic crisis, they wasted your money on a bill that won't help anyone. Given the economic climate and the nature of midterm elections, voters will be in the mood to hear the Republican argument-not the Democratic one.

So does this mean Obama was wrong to tackle health care in his first year? Not at all. Big domestic achievements come at a great political cost, but what's the point of being president-especially in a time like this-if you're not willing to reach for them? And no president should be cowed by the prospect of an ugly midterm: They're almost unavoidable and-as evidenced by Reagan and Clinton-they don't mean that much.

Sure, any bill that might pass Congress at this point will be a flawed compromise, one that will deeply disappoint the Democratic base-and one that will leave unaddressed major flaws in the health system.

But it will be a start, and the opportunity will be there for subsequent Congresses to improve on it. Social Security and Medicare had to be reformed after they became law. It took three passes to finally get the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Socially transformative legislation doesn't happen at once. It evolves.

The fact that they will take a bath in next year's elections should, in a way, be liberating for the White House. They are right to accept some compromise on health care; otherwise, no bill will ever get through. But they need to make sure that the bill that emerges has a framework that can be adapted and expanded in the years ahead-something that will pay dividends for Democrats well into the future. Just not in 2010.

More from Steve Kornacki:

That Grand Health Care Compromise? Jerry Nadler Has His Doubts

Time for the Lieberman Rule

Obama and the Reagan Trajectory

Well, at least according to Thursday's New York Post, which has Spitzer—who lasted half as long as a governor as Sarah Palin did—mulling a bid for state comptroller next year.

Let's suppose he is. His chances of winning would be small, and further embarrassment—for himself and for his family—would be almost certain, but as one elected official put it on Thursday, "The guy's nuts, so who knows?"

Still, the broad consensus among political insiders is that the filing deadline will come and go next year with Spitzer still on the political sidelines.

The simplest reason is that it's just too soon. Spitzer inflicted considerable trauma on the state when he was forced (or felt forced) to quit the governorship 14 months into his term. And now, before that term is even over, he wants to jump back in the game and seek another statewide office? His stint in political purgatory just hasn't been long enough.

Plus, he'd run with no support from the Democratic establishment, which he alienated during his time as governor. In a '10 campaign, establishment Democrats wouldn't even have to pretend to like him. It could get very ugly very fast.

And if he somehow secured the Democratic nomination—which would be an uphill fight, with an incumbent (albeit an unelected one) in the comptroller's office now and with Andrew Cuomo looking put his own man (or woman) in the job—Spitzer would be supremely vulnerable in the fall.

The best thing that down-ballot Democratic candidates in New York usually have going for them is their anonymity; knowing nothing about the candidates, voters blindly check off the Democratic nominee. But they know Spitzer's name, and not for nice reasons.

Moreover, with unemployment high and Democrats running Washington, 2010 will be a stronger-than-usual year for Republicans in New York (and elsewhere), further eroding that partisan advantage.

That said, no one doubts that Spitzer is aching to return to politics—and that he's very much pleased that his (possible) political future is suddenly being discussed and very anxious to gauge the reaction.

The word in Democratic circles for months has been that Spitzer was making it known—passively and indirectly—that he'd be willing to run for office in '10, maybe for comptroller, maybe for attorney general, maybe even for the U.S. Senate. And he's been eagerly accepting political talk show invitations, hoping that voters might learn to see his face and not instinctively think of the sex scandal. Thursday's Post story is a logical piece of this evolution.

Comptroller would be the most logical (or least illogical) office to shoot for in '10. Governor, obviously, is out of the question, and Kirsten Gillibrand's Senate seat is over his head, too (and that's not even getting into the terrible politics of a man who was ensnared in a prostitution scandal trying to push a female senator aside). Attorney general is probably too much as well—again, selling a guy who trafficked high-priced hookers across state lines for New York's top law enforcement position just doesn't work.

Comptroller, though, is lower-profile—the bottom-rung statewide office, a better symbolic starting point for a scandalized politician on the comeback trail. And while those who know Spitzer say he lacks the patience for the accounting nitty-gritty that would come with the job, he could argue that his "sheriff of Wall Street" credentials would make him a good steward of the public's money.

And then there's the fun part: revenge. To win the Democratic nomination, Spitzer would have to take out Tom DiNapoli—the same man he called "thoroughly and totally unqualified" back in 2007, when the Democratic Legislature infuriated and embarrassed Spitzer by choosing DiNapoli for the open comptroller's job.

Plus, if he were to win the office next November, Spitzer would have the green light to embarrass Andrew Cuomo (who, presumably, will be elected governor) with audits—delicious payback for Cuomo's pursuit of the "Trooper-gate" scandal that helped stall Spitzer's governorship in 2007.

But all of this, almost certainly, will never move past the realm of the fanciful. The kind of comeback that Spitzer yearns for may be impossible—but even if he can pull it off, it will have to be a process, one that plays out over a period of years.

The example of Gary Hart comes to mind. Hart was 50 when, in the spring of 1987, his front-running White House campaign was jolted by revelations of an apparent extramarital affair (something that seems rather tame compared to Spitzer's story). Thinking he had no choice, Hart quit the race—a decision he began trying to undo within months.

In December '87, he jumped back in the presidential race, but no one took him seriously and he was wiped out in Iowa and New Hampshire. A few years later, he toyed with running again for the Senate in Colorado, but the party establishment wouldn't touch him. He even flirted with running for president again in 2004—but found very few takers. There was no undoing the original sin of quitting—it ensured that he'd always be defined by scandal.

Hart probably still wonders what would have happened if he'd just tried to ride out the storm in May of 1987—and probably still regrets that he didn't. Spitzer, who is now 50, may have a similar future in store: No matter how many times he tries to get back in, the lurid headlines of March '08 will be there haunting him.