Despite White House efforts to discount the importance of the loss of the only two governorships on the off-year ballot, especially in New Jersey, where Obama had campaigned heavily for embattled Gov. Jon Corzine, the implications were clear to other Democrats.
Rep. Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a leader of the moderate-conservative “Blue Dogs,” called the result “a wake-up call for Congress. A tidal wave could be coming.”
His fellow Tennessean, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, said that Obama “retains his personal popularity, but his policies, and those pushed by the congressional Democrats, are scaring the daylights out of people.”
Democratic pollster Peter Hart, in a memo to his clients, warned of the possible consequences of “the disappointment and disgust the American public feels toward Washington. It is as strongly negative as the period of 1979-80 and 1973-74.” Both those cycles saw wholesale changes in Congress, the Democrats benefiting in the latter and the Republicans in the former.