The midterm elections were all about...

...the economy, specifically the 9.6% unemployment rate. When people feel good about the economy, they vote for the incumbents; when they don't, they throw the bums out. It's that simple.

It's important to remember this whenever political junkies get too wrapped up in the kind of stuff that political junkies get too wrapped up in.

James Carville (above) said it best, "It's the economy, stupid."

Jonathan Chait has a good post today, "The Truman Myth," in which he says:

Keep this in mind when reading the endless stream of commentary about what President Obama needs to do to win re-election, and then the post-commentary for years to come about how he moved to the center and therefore won, or rediscovered his fighting liberal spirit and won, or refused to change his liberal message and lost, or failed to find his populist voice and lost. About 80% of the question is what happens to the economy. The rest matters only at the margins.