A Bad Night To Be Barack Obama

This is probably not the change he had hoped for.

Southwest Airlines runs television ads that show someone in an embarrassing situation and then the announcer asks "Wanna get away?" President Obama took that suggestion today and got out of Washington:

As the headline on the Politico44 site blared:

After a disappointing election night Tuesday, President Obama heads to Madison, Wis., to deliver a speech on education. He'll meet with middle school students, along with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, before making remarks.

But let's face it: We all know what the Wednesday news cycle's going to be about …

John Harris and Jonathan Martin saw it this way in their coverage entitled Democrats, Incumbents Get Wake Up Call for Politico:

Eager to drain the 2009 elections of drama and import, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs claimed Tuesday night that President Barack Obama was “not watching returns.”

You can be sure that he is studying them closely now: The off-year elections were in two big races an unmistakable rebuke of Democrats, reshuffling Obama’s political circumstances in ways likely to have severe near-term consequences for his policy agenda and larger governing strategy.

Independents took flight from Democrats. They suffered humiliating gubernatorial losses in traditionally Democratic New Jersey, where Obama lent his prestige in a pair of 11th-hour campaign rallies Sunday, and in Virginia, which had been trending leftward and just last year was held up as an example of how Obama was redrawing the political map in his favor.

Tuesday night’s trends were emphatically not in Obama’s favor. Among those paying closest attention are dozens of Democrats who won formerly Republican congressional districts in 2006 and 2008 and are up for re-election in 2010. Many of these pick-ups that powered the Democrats’ recapture of Congress came in Southern and Border states, or the Ohio River Valley, where political conditions are similar to those in Virginia.

But perhaps John Dickerson put it best in an article for Slate entitled How Last Night's Elections Were Bad For Obama:
Voters are very jittery about the economy. In both New Jersey and Virginia, voters listed it as their top priority. Those voters overwhelmingly voted for Republicans. That's not good for Obama or his party going into the 2010 elections—unless, of course, the jobs picture turns around. A Democracy Corps poll sounded a warning on Election Day. In the 60 closest congressional districts, Republicans scored somewhat better than Democrats on the economy, particularly with messages that focused on the deficit.

Here's more bad news for Obama and Democrats in 2010. Turnout for Democrats wasn't very good. Everyone knew that the Obama Democrats of 2008 wouldn't turn out. But the president visited both New Jersey and Virginia at least in part to help turn out the Democratic base. The number of young voters and African-American voters, both of whom were such a strong part of Obama's coalition, were down in both contests. In Virginia, African-American turnout was 15 percent, down from 20 percent in 2008. Voters aged 18 to 29 made up only 10 percent of the vote, down over 50 percent from last year.

Yep, it was bad night to be Barack Obama. And if the economy doesn't come around, 2010 will be a bad year for the same.