The legacy of the '09 off-presidential year elections is still to be determined as politicians, pundits and partisans debate whether Tuesday's gubernatorial massacre of Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey was a backlash against President Barack Obama's governance or not.

The GOP, itself a tattered group of extreme partisans, is of course eager to claim victory whether or not it deserves the credit. It does not. But equally laughable was White House press secretary Robert Gibbs' pronouncement that the Democratic pickup of one upstate New York U.S. House seat (in a traditionally Republican district) was a credible accomplishment for the party. Not true: Democrats got trounced in '09 and that's that, albeit in a limited portion of the country.

Elsewhere, some pundits have tried the line that "candidates win elections, not parties." But parties select candidates and should be out there grooming them for office as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich did so effectively in the early '90s and current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi did in '06 and '08.

Whether this week's elections are a bellwether for the 2010 congressional elections or not, they're worth examining to spotlight a couple of trends that Democrats need to try to reverse.

First, Obama was swept into office with support from independents, single women, women of color and young voters between the ages of 18-30. Those demographics (particularly young Americans) were motivated to turn out and vote in historic proportions not so much by Obama, but against former President George Bush. There was no such motivation this week, and Democrats are either going to have to create it, or face much bigger losses next year.

My home state of Virginia had not voted Democratic in a presidential election in four decades — four decades, that is huge. Living through the '08 election in Virginia was like living on the wrong side of Alice in Wonderland's looking glass. It felt like living in a parallel universe.

I remember traveling through Norfolk in 2004 when John Kerry was the Democratic candidate for president and seeing nary a yard sign for the Democratic ticket. Norfolk is, of course, heavily populated by Navy personnel and their families, and Bush was a favorite in this community. That was normal for Virginia.

In 2008, most of those yard signs in Norfolk were supporting the Obama candidacy and it felt like a silent revolution had come to pass. I did not visit Norfolk last month, but exit polls show that the revolution of 2008 has done a 180-degree turn in one short year. Why?