The best explanation for the mid-term results was uttered by Harry Truman: "Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for a real Republican all the time."

That is the consequence of two years of DINO politics from the White House and Capitol Hill.

Glenn Greenwald explains about the pundit sloth blaming the left and confirms Truman's warning:  "But there's one glaring, steadfastly ignored fact destroying [Lawrence} O'Donnell's attempt -- which is merely the standard pundit storyline that has been baking for months and will now be served en masse -- to blame The Left and declare liberalism dead.  It's this little inconvenient fact:  the Blue Dog coalition was crushed by the GOP wave election.

"Half of the Blue Dog incumbents were defeated, and by themselves accounted for close to half of the Democratic losses. Some of us have been arguing for quite some time that the Rahm-engineered dependence on Blue Dog power is one of the many factors that has made the Democratic Party so weak, blurry, indistinguishable from the GOP......."  

Having a DINO president who was more a panel moderator than a leader set the stage for this expected mid-term debacle.

Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive calls it the death of corporate liberalism....both parties being controlled by big money.

"Obama didn’t help himself by trying to placate the Republicans and by muddling his messaging.

"He didn’t help himself by lowballing the stimulus and by rejecting a moratorium on foreclosures.

"He didn’t help himself by playing a Washington insider game, by trying to buy off a couple of Republicans in Congress and by playing footie with huge industries, like the banks and the pharmaceutical companies.

"Obama could have, and should have, nationalized Bank of America and Citibank, or at the very least, compelled them to halt foreclosures and write down the principal on all their mortgages by 25 or 30 percent. But Obama didn’t get anything from the banks in exchange for the hundreds of billions of dollars the Treasury doled out, and the trillions in guarantees. And so the bankers laughed all the way to the vault, and even some Republicans scored by running commercials against Democrats who voted for the bailout.

"His messaging was as poor as his governing. First he blamed the Wall Street CEOs for their obscene bonuses; then he called them “very savvy businessmen,” adding: “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.”

"Similarly, on the budget, first he argued for deficit spending; then he said we need to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term.

"This was confusing to millions of Americans, dispiriting to the base, and diverting to his enemies.

"But basically, he didn’t give people enough tangible benefits to say, OK, I’m with him. He’s helped me. I’ll vote for Democrats again.

"You can’t tell an unemployed person that you’d have been twice as unemployed without my help. You need to give that person a job now.

"You can’t tell an elderly person you’re closing the donut hole on prescription drugs—by the year 2020. You need to close it now.

"You can’t tell an adult with a pre-existing condition that you’ll force insurance companies to cover you—by the year 2014, when you may be dead. You need to cover people now.

"You can’t tell families being foreclosed upon that you’re trying hard to keep them in their homes. You need to keep them in their homes now......"

John Nichols at The Nation gives Obama some advice:  " If he is smart, Obama will borrow the a page from Truman's playbook. Faced with a reactionary Republican Congress, Truman pulled out his veto pen, took to the bully pulpit and gave 'em hell. Truman also counseled against compromise..."

Unfortunately, the DINOs in the White House and on Capitol Hill are probably busy planning how to compromise even more.  The Democratic Party is still filled with too many DINOs like Evan Bayh.