What happened?

Today has been a day of alternating waves of despair and scrounging for an explanation of what happened.

How did we go from all these senate races being stuck in statistical ties -- only to have the Republican win them by 6% or 8%?    Especially, given that there were reasons to think that Democratic voters were under-represented in many of the polls?

So far, the best I've come up with stems from something I read today, saying that Mitch McConnell's strategy was based on the fact that the most people don't know which party controls the houses of congress;   and so, when there is deadlock, they always blame the president and vote against his party.

The Republicans certainly tried -- and succeeded -- in augmenting that strategy by spending six years demonizing President Obama at every opportunit and by thwarting as much of his agenda as they could, to make him look ineffectual.

They made the president the enemy;   then all their campaigners had to do was to link their Democratic opponent with Obama.     That certainly was true in Kentucky and Georgia, where the most prevalent tv ads were some version of "A vote for Michelle Nunn is a vote for Obama."

The Democrats, I'm afraid, played right into this strategy by running away from the president and his very real accomplishments.    In retrospect, they -- and the country -- might have been better off if they had stood up to the criticism and proudly supported his policies and explained why -- turning the tables on their opponents saying "And David Purdue wants to deprive you of that right."

This was unanticipatedly bad . . . with very long repercussions.

Ralph