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Nate Cohn spotlights the Dems’ huge problem in the South:

The inability of Southern Democrats to run well ahead of a deeply unpopular Mr. Obama raises questions about how an increasingly urban and culturally liberal national Democratic Party can compete in the staunchly conservative South. It raises serious doubts about whether a future Democratic presidential candidate, like Hillary Clinton, can count on faring better among Southern white voters than President Obama, as many political analysts have assumed she might.

The Democrats running in the South on Tuesday night were not weak candidates. They had distinguished surnames, the benefits of incumbency, the occasional conservative position and in some cases flawed opponents. They were often running in the states where Southern Democrats had the best records of outperforming the national party. Black turnout was not low, either, nearly reaching the same proportion of the electorate in North Carolina, Louisiana and Georgia as in 2012.

Joel Kotkin examines the demographics of last night’s electorate:

The Republicans actually won among white voters under 30, 53% to 44%, even as they lost 30- to 44-year-olds, 58 to 40. If these trends hold, the generation gap that many Democrats saw as their long-term political meal ticket may prove somewhat less compelling.

If they are losing the middle and working classes, and even some millennials, what are the Democrats left with? They did best in states like California and New York, where there is a high concentration of progressive post-graduates and non-whites, and where many of the sectors benefiting most from the recovery have thrived, notably tech, financial services, and high-end real estate.

Yet these areas of strength could also prove a problem for the Democrats. A party increasingly dominated by progressives in New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Seattle may embrace the liberal social and environmental agenda that captivates party’s loyalists but is less appealing to the middle class. Unless the Democrats develop a compelling economic policy that promises better things for the majority, they may find their core constituencies too narrow to prevent the Republicans from enjoying an unexpected, albeit largely undeserved, resurgence.

(Screenshot from the Upshot’s detailed maps of yesterday’s results)

Sahil Kapur heralds it:

Cruz telegraphed his strategy in a post-election interview Tuesday night on Fox News, calling on Republicans to do whatever it takes to repeal Obamacare and and prevent Obama’s upcoming executive actions on immigration. “The two biggest issues nationwide were, number one, stopping the train wreck that is Obamacare; number two, stopping the president from illegally granting amnesty,” Cruz said. He also appeared on CNN and declined to voice support for McConnell as majority leader, calling that “a decision for the conference to answer next week.”

Molly Ball is unsure who will join Cruz’s ranks:

The new Republican senators are quite conservative, perhaps more so than any previous class, but they are capable of sounding reasonable and staying focused on issues voters care about. The question yet to be answered is one of tactics: When these new players come to Washington, will they seek pragmatic accommodation? Or will they team up with the likes of Cruz, putting new faces on the same old gridlock?

John Aravosis sees Cruz’s increased power as a gift to Hillary:

Cruz, as you’ll recall, was the architect of the very-unpopular Republican shutdown of the federal government. Cruz was able to whip the House Tea Party contingent into a furor, and effectively overrule House Speaker John Boehner. Cruz did all that in the minority. Imagine the damage he can do in the majority.

And that helps Hillary, and hurts the GOP overall. Hillary now has someone to run against: The GOP Congress. Up until now, Hillary Clinton had to figure out how to distance herself from a somewhat unpopular president, while having spent the last many years working for him. Now, instead, she can focus her attention, and divert ours, towards all the bad things the Republicans are going to cook up over the next two years.

That’s among Ezra’s takeaways:

Hillary Clinton is arguably also a winner here. A more Democratic year could have led to some new stars who might have been able to challenge her in 2016. Instead, some potential challengers were cut down. Gov. Martin O’Malley, for instance, saw Anthony Brown, his lt. governor and handpicked successor, defeated in Maryland. That’s not going to help him make the case that he can appeal to voters she can’t.

Tomasky wonders whether Hillary can win back some of blue-collar white voters Democrats have lost:

Maybe with Hillary and Bill, the Democrats can get back some of these voters. Maybe it really is that simple. You get people with white skin and the man has a drawl and reminds them of a time when they were younger and thinner, and some of these voters feel more comfortable with Democrats again. Not enough that Democrats can win Arkansas, God knows, but maybe enough that they can nail down North Carolina again. The media will be full of stories in the next few days about whether Obama will drag Hillary Clinton down for 2016. Could be, but I doubt it. She’s her own brand. As long as the economy isn’t awful, and Benghazi is still a punch line for Jon Stewart, she can survive this.

Friedersdorf deduces that “the 2014 losers least likely to regain ground in future elections are marijuana prohibitionists”:

“With marijuana legal in the federal government’s backyard it’s going to be increasingly difficult for national politicians to continue ignoring the growing majority of voters who want to end prohibition,” says legalization advocate Tom Angell. “We can expect to see many more ambitious national politicians finally trying to win support from the cannabis constituency instead of ignoring and criminalizing us.”

That last bit may be too optimistic. I would be surprised to see any contender in the 2016 presidential field endorse legalization. I do expect more candidates to take the position that this is a matter that ought to be left up to the states and the people.

Rand Paul already took that position:

“I’m not for having the federal government get involved. I really haven’t taken a stand on … the actual legalization. I haven’t really taken a stand on that, but I’m against the federal government telling them they can’t,” Paul said.

Sullum wonders if Congress will block legalization in DC:

Initiative 71 legalizes home cultivation of up to six plants by adults 21 or older, along with possession of up to two ounces and transfer of up to an ounce at a time “without remuneration.” Residents who are not horticulturally inclined and do not have friends who are will be out of luck unless the D.C. Council approves a system for commercial production and distribution. The council heard testimony on that issue last week, and The Washington Post reports that “a majority…has vowed to also take up legislation early next year that would establish a system to sell and tax marijuana.”

Whatever D.C. voters and legislators do can be undone by Congress, which has 30 days to overturn Initiative 71. Congress also can block Initiative 71 by forbidding D.C. to spend money on implementing it, as it did for years with the medical marijuana initiative that D.C. voters approved in 1998. One possibly hopeful sign: When the D.C. Council made possessing up to an ounce of marijuana a citable offense subject to a $25 fine earlier this year, Congress let the law take effect.

Kleiman, a longtime opponent of fully commercialized weed, hopes that DC won’t allow sales:

District residents will be able to grow a limited number of plants, possess a limited amount of the resulting cannabis, and give away—but not sell—whatever they don’t want to smoke themselves. The system is called “grow and give.”

… D.C. should try “grow and give” and see how it works. It wouldn’t generate any tax revenue, or offer consumers the same convenience or product variety as a commercial system, and of course policing the boundary between “giving” and “selling” would be virtually impossible. But it might be a big improvement on the current prohibition. Eliminating organized marketing would likely lead to a much smaller increase—if any—in cannabis abuse than we would expect if we sell pot the way we now sell beer.

Sullum compares Alaska’s legalization law to those that have come before it:

Alaska’s tax will be $50 per ounce, collected from growers. From the government’s perspective, the advantage of that approach, which is similar to the way alcohol is taxed (by volume),  is that proceeds from a given quantity of marijuana remain the same as prices drop, which is what will happen as the market develops unless something goes terribly wrong. The disadvantage, from a social engineer’s perspective, is that a tax based on weight does not take potency into account (unlike alcohol taxes, which fall more heavily on liquor than on beer).

In fact, a weight tax might encourage higher potency, especially as it becomes a larger and larger component of the retail price. If production costs fall as expected, Alaska’s weight tax could amount to a rate of 100 percent or more within a few years, giving consumers an even bigger incentive to buy the strongest pot they can find.

Sullum turns to one aspect of Oregon’s new law:

One distinct advantage of the Oregon initiative is that it does not change the standard for driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII, a.k.a. DUID). Under current law, convicting someone of DUII requires showing that he was “affected to a noticeable degree” by marijuana or another controlled substance, based on the “totality of the circumstances.” By contrast, Washington’s current rule, established by I-502, says any driver whose blood contains five or more nanograms of THC per milliliter is automatically guilty of DUID, a standard that in effect prohibits driving by many daily consumers, including patients who use marijuana as a medicine, even when they are not actually impaired.

German Lopez looks ahead:

The big year, experts and advocates say, is 2016, when legalization will likely be on the ballot in California, where medical marijuana is already legal, and several more states. “It’s an uphill battle, but we see support growing at the state and federal level,” Tvert said. “We’ve filed committees to support initiatives in Arizona, California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Nevada.”

A reader sounds off:

I voted in DC yesterday, proudly and happily for Ballot Initiative 71. My boss, a white guy in his late forties with two kids, also voted for it, and we freely talked about it at work.  How awesome is it when a 20-something single woman of color and a 40-something married white dad can high five about getting to legalize marijuana?

Know dope.

(Chart from Vox)

Douthat takes stock:

In this particular case, what was overestimated and misjudged was the permanent effectiveness of the Democratic blueprint from 2012, whose mix of social-issue appeals and tech-savvy voter targeting was supposed to work in tandem with demographic trends to cement a new socially-liberal, multicultural coalition, and render the G.O.P.’s position entirely untenable absent a major ideological reboot. That blueprint really was effective in ’12, and the underlying demographic trends are real, and one bad midterm election does not prove that the coalition cannot hold together, as Republicans may learn to their cost two years from now. But from a lot of the commentary after Obama’s re-election, you would have thought that the combination of ethnic-interest appeals on immigration policy, “war on women” rhetoric on social issues, and brilliant get-out-the-vote operations run by tech-savvy Millennials (who, we were told, were too liberal to ever build a website for a Republican) posed a kind of immediate and existential challenge to the G.O.P., requiring immediate capitulation on a range of fronts, with no time for finesse or calculation and no room for resistance.

No so, as it turned out. Events have intervened, Republican politicians and their party have managed to adapt, and — as often happens —  issue appeals that resonated in one political context have turned out to be less important than the fundamentals in another.

Marin Cogan contends that the “election has some potentially serious consequences for 2016”:

A sweep this year makes it much less likely for Democrats to take back the Senate in 2016, even if they win the presidency. But it doesn’t mean that voters should be girding themselves for President Ted Cruz in 2016, either. For the last two decades, neither party has held control of the Senate for more than eight years. For all the rhetoric you’ll hear in the coming days from Republicans that this is a mandate, it isn’t. Republicans still have a real challenge putting together a winning coalition in presidential campaign years. Democrats still have a hard time putting one together in the midterms. None of that appears to have changed on Tuesday night.

Ponnuru tackles related issues:

Obama’s popular majority, much of it concentrated in urban areas, gave him an electoral majority. But it was not distributed in a way that made for a majority in the House or, as we have just seen, a stable one in the Senate. And it also appears to have been dependent — even to an extent in blue states — on voters who do not show up in midterm elections. Accusing Republicans of hostility to contraception, for example, may work as a way of motivating marginal voters in presidential years, when they just need a little nudge to go to the polls. Not so in the midterms.

Cassidy thinks “it would be premature to call the 2014 election a major turning point”:

In short, this was a big protest vote, and a big defeat for President Obama. To that extent, it was a big victory for the Republicans. Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader-elect, earned his moment of glory. (“It’s time to turn this country around—and I will not let you down,” McConnell told a group of cheering supporters relatively early in the evening, following his thumping of Grimes.) But if a “wave election” is one that signifies important changes in the underlying dynamics of the American electorate, then this wasn’t a wave election.

Judis tries to find some good in the bad:

If there is a silver lining in the awful results of this year’s election, it lies in the fact that if the turnout had been similar to 2012 or 2008, the Democrats would have done much better. As The New York Times’ Nate Cohn has argued, that could bode well for 2016, which is not only a presidential year, but a year when the Republicans’ vulnerable Senate class of 2010 will come up for re-election. If you look at how the different groups voted, the Democrats preserved their edge among younger voters, African Americans (whose turnout seems to have been pretty good), Hispanics, single women, and professionals. Almost all the Democratic candidates did well, for instance, among voters with post-graduate degrees. In Georgia, Michelle Nunn won these voters by 53 to 46 percent. So that’s a consolation of sorts.

But in 2016 and in future midterm elections, the Democrats will still have to do better among those parts of the electorate that have flocked to the Republicans: older voters and white working-class voters. The numbers for the latter in this election were singularly dispiriting. In Florida, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist lost whites without college degrees by 32 to 61 percent; in Virginia, Senator Mark Warner’s near-death experience was due to losing these voters by 30 to 68 percent. In Colorado and Iowa, they held the key to Republican Senate victories. In 2012, the Democrats benefited by facing a Republican who reeked of money and privilege and displayed indifference toward the 47 percent. Romney lost the white working class in states like Ohio. Democrats may not have that luxury of a Mitt Romney in the next election. And in that case, they will have to do considerably better among these voters, or else 2016 could turn out to be another nightmare election for the Democrats.

(Photo: The Senate office of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY). By Allison Shelley/Getty Images)

 

https://twitter.com/freddoso/status/529887759490908160

https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/529852388816195584

 

Sam Wang observes that Republican Senate candidates outperformed late-campaign polls by a surprising margin:

Tonight’s performance by the GOP has been quite remarkable. In close Senate races, Republicans seem to be outperforming polls by around 5 percentage points. That goes a long way toward explaining what is happening in Virginia. In close gubernatorial races, Republicans are outperforming polls by about 3 percentage points. I did say that historically, midterm polling can be off in either direction by a median of 3 percentage points – far worse than Presidential years. Tonight is certainly consistent with that.

Harry Enten highlights the gubernatorial races, in which the GOP also had “an amazing night”:

The GOP won all the close races in which its candidates were favored, such as Michigan and Wisconsin. Republicans won the vast majority of close races in which they were slight underdogs, such as Florida, Illinois and Maine. They won in Kansas, where we gave the GOP incumbent, Sam Brownback, only a 20 percent chance. And Republicans have even taken Maryland, where they had only a 6 percent chance of winning according to our last pre-election forecast.

In Josh Marshall’s opinion, that’s the big news:

To me, in evaluating the significance of the night’s results, the governors’ races are the bigger tell than the senate seats. The truth is that the Democrats were fighting for the Senate on a merciless, largely red-state terrain. They had some key retirements on top of that. The governors’ races are quite a different matter. Scott Walker wins – three election victories in four years, an undeniable credential for national office. Sam Brownback holds on in Kansas, a state which he’s basically run straight into the ground and torn apart the state GOP. That can only be explained by a tide bringing him over. Illinois, Florida, Connecticut (possible), Colorado (possible), Maryland. These results aren’t about terrain or candidates. They’re about the national political climate.

Larison is a bit surprised at the Republican wave:

All of this suggests that most observers, myself included, underestimated the extent to which Republicans would dominate this election. The GOP ran an almost purely negative campaign and said almost nothing substantive about policy, and they have been rewarded with one of the biggest gains in Senate seats they have ever achieved in a midterm vote. Republicans can’t claim a mandate for anything, but with control of both houses of Congress they don’t need to have one to stymie and thwart the administration on any issue they choose. Now that they have just won a major victory running on nothing, that is what I assume they will do.

But Yglesias just shrugs:

There’s no need to over-interpret the election. If there’s anything we’ve learned watching the see-saw of 2008 followed by 2010 followed by 2012, it’s that the American electorate has no problem turning on a dime. But let’s not under-interpret it, either. Democrats were dealt a bad hand this year, but they lost even worse than that. You can tell a complicated story about why, but the fact that Obama’s approval ratings are stuck in the low forties summarize it pretty well. Right now, the country isn’t happy with the Democratic Party or its leader. And on Election Day, Democrats paid the price.

Saletan tries to cheer up Democrats by pointing to Republicans who campaigned on traditionally liberal issues:

1. Poverty. Democratic incumbents spent a lot of time talking about new jobs, economic growth, and other aggregate numbers that have been going in the right direction. Republican challengers undercut that message by focusing on people at the bottom. From California to Georgia to Virginia, Republicans called attention to high or rising poverty rates.

2. Minorities. Republicans also zeroed in on blacks and other underserved populations. In Louisiana right-wing candidate Rob Maness pointed out, “Unemployment for young black men in this state is three times the rate of unemployment for anybody else.” In Georgia, Republican Gov. Nathan Deal emphasized the state’s progress toward reducing the number of black men in jail.

3. Equal pay. Republicans researched how much money Democratic officeholders paid their male and female staffers. Any Democrat who paid women less was called out for it, regardless of circumstances. Republicans used this tactic in at least five states: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, New Hampshire, and Oregon.

Ambers asks what tonight’s results and exit polls tell us about the electorate:

First, the electorate was not overwhelmingly Republican or conservative, even though it was relatively more conservative than the country as a whole. In fact, from the national exit poll: 58 percent of those surveyed believe that undocumented immigrants should receive a legal pathway to citizenship. Fifty-three percent say that abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. A majority support a rise in the minimum wage for hourly workers.

The big numbers show the economy is improving as a whole. But real wages and personal income aren’t growing while wealth inequality is. We may put too much faith in predicting elections based on the gross domestic product or unemployment rate, especially in the hangover (Ben White’s phrase) from the Great Recession. I’m looking for hard figures to back this up, but the combination of anti-government sentiment, a sense that when government does intervene, it intervenes in ways that mess things up, and a sense that the economy is not improving adds up to an electorate that does not believe that the administration is competent enough to handle the big problems of the day. That’s a referendum on President Obama’s governing.

David Corn recommends a little Democratic soul-searching:

Perhaps it is nearly impossible for a president and his aides to govern well in difficult times (crafting complex and often not fully satisfying responses to knotty problems at home and abroad) and promote clear political messaging that consistently cuts through the chaff and connects with stressed-out voters freaked out about the future. Yet elections work… for those who use them. And angry Republicans have once again taken advantage of Democratic disaffection, disappointment, apathy, or whatever. Now, in part because Obama could not convince voters in Iowa, Colorado, and elsewhere to stick with him and the policies he champions, many of his accomplishments are at risk, and the nation faces the prospect of more gridlock and chaos in Washington. But Democrats ought not to blame him alone. When it comes to saying who is at fault, they need to say, “We are.”

Beinart identifies “one big takeaway from tonight’s Republican landslide that should worry Democrats a lot”:

The GOP is growing hungrier to win. It’s about time. As a general rule, the longer a party goes without holding the White House, the hungrier it becomes. And the hungrier it becomes, the more able it is to discard damaging elements of party orthodoxy while still rousing its political base. … Republicans in 2014 combined candidate impurity with grassroots passion, which is what they’ll need to do to win in 2016. Achieving this combination is tougher in presidential elections. It’s hard to deviate from Limbaughesque orthodoxy when you’re competing for the hard right voters who dominate the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary. … But if the 2010 midterms revealed a GOP fixated on ideological purity, 2014 has showcased the party’s new tolerance, and even enthusiasm, for pragmatism.

(Photo: Senator Mark Udall gives his concession speech at the Democrat’s Party at the Westin November 4, 2014 in Denver. By John Leyba/The Denver Post via Getty Images)