Jonathan Chait of the New Republic is probably best know to conservative political wonks as the impetus for 'chaitred'--an irrational hatred of George W. Bush; so when I embarked on a read of his column, I expected wild-eyed hyperbole.

Surprisingly, its a fairly reasonable argument.

It's certainly legitimate to question the policies or the tactics of the Obama administration. But in order to have that conversation, you need to begin with a baseline expectation. What sort of performance should we expect normally? Clearly, in the current environment, it's not rational to expect the majority party to escape any losses whatsoever. If you want to blame the Democrats' loss on bad messaging or wimpy policies or rampaging socialism, then you need to establish how you'd expect them to do given normal messaging and policies.

Chait goes on to list a number of completely reasonable structural considerations for the election that would establish that base-line; exposure, public interest and economics.

Here's his final call.

Still, it's a rough ballpark baseline. If you want to have the "what did Obama do wrong" argument, you first need to establish what "wrong" would look like. That's probably a 50 seat-or-more loss.

I could probably live with that, although by my lights, it seems inordinately high. Exposure for the House is a constant, since unlike the Senate in which six year terms are staggered to expose only a portion of the chamber seats to the whims of an electoral cycle, every Congress critter runs every two years.

Public interest isn't like the weather; its a direct result of the presence of a national crisis, or the absence of it. The left's media sycophants always mentioned the historical pattern of mid-term loss for the President's party, but they always fail to note that Republicans gained seats in 2002. Like this election, there was a national crisis at that time as well, but unlike this election, the public perception was that the President and his party were effectively dealing with the crisis.

Finally, it could be argued that economics is in fact, like the weather, since normal economic cycles aren't finally controlled by Congress or the White House, yet this isn't a normal economic cycle, and although Democrats have worked hard to obfuscate the reasons why the economy continues to be weak, its rather obvious even to the most casual participant in the market economy. Consider this view by campus dope dealers on the effect of Prop 19 in California.

A second dealer, who obtains his merchandise from a medical marijuana club, said that predicting price changes is difficult because of the uncertain regulatory environment. “A change in price will really depend on how much the government wants to tax it and who will be able to sell it,” he said.

Apparently, tax and regulatory regimes affect price and demand--who knew?

Its interesting to talk to people and recognize that they intuitively understand that the Obama regime's policies or unwillingness to make policy have created paralyzing ambiguity in all sorts of markets. Corporations sit on piles of money, unable to justify investment in a climate where the rules could change--retroactively--at any time. Homes don't get purchased for fear of further market drops. Clearly the Democrats apparently cluelessness about the nature of the American economy has had direct effects that people are correctly holding the governing party accountable for. Its not rain, its Obama hosing us down.

Its perfectly understandable that people who have invested both personally and professionally in the Progressive world view, don't want to contemplate a root and branch rejection by the electorate, but facts are stubborn things.

Gallup has thoughtfully provided a less 'French skating judge' baseline for a mid-term election like this.

Presidents who retain majority job approval from Americans at the time of midterm elections are much less likely to see their party suffer heavy seat losses than are those with sub-50% approval ratings. Since 1946, when presidents are above 50% approval, their party loses an average of 14 seats in the U.S. House in the midterm elections, compared with an average loss of 36 seats when presidents are below that mark.

As a Progressive, one might be able to plausibly explain away a 36 seat loss as merely a case of 'political weather', but explaining away fifty seats is simply delusional. Of course, I wouldn't actually expect Chait to accept any benchmark as a repudiation of his cherished political philosophy--a guy's gotta make a living you know.