If you’re a Democrat who woke up this morning with a strange and unfamiliar sensation you couldn’t name, let me help you out: It’s called optimism. After running the table in Tuesday’s off-year elections, there’s a sense that the party has at last found new voices and a message — affordability — that resonates with voters.

It really hasn’t — not even close. And that’s exactly why Republicans should be scared out of their minds right about now.

In general, we vastly overstate the significance of these first elections after a presidential year, when voters usually reward whoever’s out of power. I think back to 2001, when Democrats won the governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey, even as the country rallied around George W. Bush in the wake of terrorist attacks.

One year later, Republicans went on to have one of the strongest midterm cycles ever for an incumbent party, and Bush won reelection two years after that. (By that time, one of the governors elected in 2001 — New Jersey’s Jim McGreevey — wasn’t even in office anymore, having resigned in scandal.)

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All of which is to say that Democrats should have won this year — and yet it felt like they tried so hard not to. Both of their........

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