To Al, yeah, I remember when Clinton was president, and the Republicans gave him such an easy time, on account of his impeccably Caucasian skin. The race card is maxed out.

Ezra Klein's list omitted the most important reason for the Democrat's and President's beating on Election Day.

It's the elephant in the room!!

I am embarrassed to point it out. No one wants to talk publicly about it.
It's a shame our country, in 2014, has to live with this bigotry.

The 6th reason, left off Klein's list, is the President's skin color. Why don't the supposed political experts ADD IT TO THEIR LIST!

the slant of tonight's presentation is amazingly obvious if you can listen with an open, but skeptical mind.
You prefer to spin issues in terms of what liberal stance has been fulfilled by this Congress and President ? It might make more sense to ask what has the effect of dialogue and policy had on the American people and the world at large ?
One example: The Nobel Prize winning President, and his supporters, have produced conflict and embarrassment for the US in every corner of the globe. I am pressed to find an improvement in foreign relations anywhere. Any accomplishments that do come to the surface are not of our doing, but the doing of others, or of "natural" events.
Another question you raised had to do with Republican gains in states that passed (what you consider) ballot issues "owned by the Democrats. Your excuses and observations were pitiful in the face of the simple and actual fact the voters are not robots, and normally represent a complex and broad range of opinions and motivations.
Before I get bitchy, I think I will POST.
Thx
James

This is surely the best example of "Dog bites man" ever aired on OTM. A public radio program host runs for office... as a Democrat.

How far away, really, would IraGlassTerryGrossGarrisonKeillor or BobGarfieldBrookeGladstoneJohnHockenberry or NinaTotenbergCokieRobertsLindaWertheimer be from running for office, and is there the slightest doubt that any of them would run as Democrats?

The story to drop jaws all across the FM dial would be a public radio host who ran for office as a Republican. I'd happily buy a drink for anyone who could credibly come up with a public radio host[ess] who might possibly run for office as a Republican.

David; unfortunately you didn't discuss what E. Klein said about liberal measures actually passing in this same election. And, as he also noted, there has been no liberal legislative push in Congress in the last two years voters would be reacting against, Harry Reid to the contrary notwithstanding.

I’m confused. The president said, "Make no mistake about it, my policies are on the ballot." The republicans, without a positive agenda, ran on anti-Obamacare, anti-Obamanomics, anti-immigration and anti-Obama-executive-amnesty on immigration, plus the individual candidates themselves didn’t want the president in their districts or states, and when one DOES want the President, he manages to lose blue Maryland… but it has nothing to do with the state of liberalism?

In deconstructing myths, Klein may be creating new ones. He claims that it’s a myth that the election was a referendum on liberalism. Klein should know that liberalism is measured not just by its policies but the ability of its leaders. The whole reason Republicans could claim truthfully that their opponents had sided with the president 97 percent of the time is that not only did Reid refuse to bring bills to a vote, he shut down the amendment process. That left red state Democrats precious few times to demonstrate their independence. That meant that liberalism became all about the war on women, climate change and the Koch Brothers. And that leadership made democrats look like the part of “no.”

It just may be, contra Klein and Chait, that it was not just that Obama and House Republicans could not agree, but Obama and *Democrats* that could not agree. We’ll have to see how many democratic votes the Keystone XL pipeline gets, now that Steyer money bought essentially nothing with voters. Reid did such a good job of protecting the president's agenda from a counter-voice, that he hung his own party out to dry.

It would have been nice for you to have contrasted Klein’s list with Byron York’s list of myths in the Washington Examiner (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/voters-verdict-explodes-democratic-myths/article/2555779). It would also have had the benefit of making OTM look balanced.