Has a very interesting post about the causes of the Democratic election defeats (and the Republican ones) in the 2009 elections.  I think he's basically right, although I'm not sure he goes far enough.

In particular, he says:

"But in New Jersey, there's literally almost no evidence that the Democrats' agenda had anything to do with Jon Corzine's defeat. Voters who cited a national issue were more likely to vote for Corzine, and voters who cited a local one, the Republican Chris Christie.

In Virginia, the evidence is certainly a little stronger, insofar as the national agenda may have affected the lopsided turnout (the electorate which turned out Tuesday had voted for John McCain by 8 points, a near-reversal of the actual results). Even there, however, the quarter of the electorate that cited health care as their main issue went for the Democrat Deeds 51-49. And in NY-23, which was supposed to have been the ultimate smackdown of the Democrats' agenda, the Republican Conservative candidate unexpectedly lost."

That isn't evidence that we don't know why independents went Republican or Democrat in these races.  It's strong evidence that national politics didn't have much of an effect on these races at all; that "all politics is local".

Even ostensibly "national issues" according to pundits and Silver, like "the economy" aren't really national to most voters.  Voters don't care what GDP growth is, they care whether their job is safe, their business is thriving, their neighbors are secure enough to keep their neighborhood decent.

To the extent that national politics affected these races at all, it has more to do with distrust of Democratic politicians due to the ongoing mendacity of the Obama Administration and corruption scandals (Corzine) than any policy in particular.  Health care is a 50-50 issue; it isn't going to swing elections.

Democrats don't need to change course on the national level so much as stop obsessing about it.