Decline and Fall of the Democratic Party?

[Alydar]

With the presidential elections aside, I was interested to see that the Democractic Party lost some seats in the House and Senate and most damning of all saw Tom Daschle, it's Senate leader, lose his re-election bid. Maybe the only good news for the Democrats was that they split the Governorships.

So this begs the question. Is the Democratic Party in a state of decline? Are they out of touch with the electorate or is the electorate just becoming more conservative? Or maybe this is just some cyclical thing that occurs? Or hell maybe it's nothing of the above I mentioned. But there has to be an explanation somewhere! What do you think?

[Grantref]

As disgusted as I am with the outcome of the elections (much more so regarding the passage of numerous anti-gay-marriage measures than the reelection of george bush, an event that I reluctantly resigned myself to about a month ago), I very much doubt that the current state of affairs will last longer than another ten or so years at the absolute most. Politics, economics, and history are cyclical. To everything (turn, turn, turn) there is a season.