In the Future, Everyone Will Be a Senator for Six Years

It’s an obvious irony of this election that the Democrats who were swept out of the Senate last night with reason to curse Barack Obama owed those very seats to him in the first place. They were the Democratic class of 2008, a motley bunch of newcomers from the country's reddest states, helped by an electorate built on the candidacy of the country's first African-African nominee. Six years later, it was Obama who weighed them down.

From the first stirrings of this campaign cycle, as Obama’s popularity faded quickly after 2012, the dynamics of his final election season as a politician were apparent. Republicans wanted to nationalize the race, make it about the president and public cynicism about the direction of the country. Democratic candidates responded by trying to localize their races. Mark Begich, Mark Pryor, and Mary Landrieu—who each had a father active in politics while Obama was in grade school—grasped at family legacies. Kay Hagan worked to reorient her race around state policy debates rather than national ones. Mark Udall searched for wedge issues that could split the Republican coalition.