Certainly, election results one year out cannot portend future election results. A year is an eternity in politics, but unlike poll results, election results do mark the time in a firm way.

There are some basic facts that cannot be ignored. Barack Obama campaigned heavily for Jon Corzine in New Jersey, the incumbent Democrat governor and former senator. The president also campaigned for Creigh Deeds in Virginia. Both lost, and in Virginia, the Democrats lost all the way down the ticket. The only place the Democrats won on Tuesday was where Barack Obama did not campaign, New York’s 23rd congressional district.  Even there, if the vote of the Republican and Conservative Party had been combined, and the Republican nominee had not thrown her support behind the Democrat, it would have been a sweeping loss for the Democrats all around.

To be fair in New Jersey, Corzine appeared to be his own worst enemy. Usually reliable Democrat counties did not turn out due to Corzine’s lack of popularity within his own base. That lack of popularity spilled over into the independent vote as well and fueled voters’ turn toward Chris Christie, his Republican challenger. Corzine failed to attract the independent vote and the black vote.  In Newark, Corzine received one-third fewer votes than Senator Frank Lautenberg did last year. Both Lautenberg’s Republican challenger and Christie got about the same number of votes. Even worse, Obama stumped for Corzine in Newark on Sunday before the election ( for more on the New Jersey election, go here).

In Virginia, the White House was less committed though Obama did make appearances for the Democrat candidate; however, Obama won the commonwealth by six points in 2008, again largely because of a high turnout in new and independent voters and black voters. None of these groups that made the Obama presidency possible came out for either Democrat gubernatorial candidate, and neither of the other two statewide races that were on the ballot in Virginia.  In fact, the Virginia results were an old-school drubbing and much less interesting than New Jersey.

The White House plainly thought they could make a difference in both New Jersey and Virginia, and did not figure they had a shot at New York 23, which had been in GOP hands since the War Between the States  (Joe Biden was sent apparently because the White House could not spare the gardener).  To top that off, the Democrat National Committee poured $10 million into the two governor races. This was not done without White House approval.

The results may mean less for 2010 generally than it does internally for the Obama campaign/administration.  They realize now more than anyone that the president’s political power is limited, and that what happened in 2008 may be an isolated incident, a strike of political lightning, where a bad Republican candidate and a coalition primed by platitudinal rhetoric made for the perfect electoral storm.  Clearly, Obama’s popularity could not bring victory to a lame candidate in a state he won by 18 points a mere year ago. Perhaps Corzine was too far gone, but the groups Obama so brilliantly motivated to the polls in 2008 acted as if no one told them there was an election going on in 2009.  It wasn’t as if the New Jersey election was entirely local, either – over half of those  exit polled said the direction of the national economy concerned them greatly, and 61% of those voted for Christie.  Also, 75% of those who voted for Corzine approved of the job Obama was doing, while 88% of the those who voted for Christie viewed Obama disapprovingly. In short, the approval rating for Obama in New Jersey based on the exit polls and poll results between Christie and Corzine works out to about 41%.  As in, this is Obama’s approval rating among those who vote in elections where Obama is not the candidate on the ballot in heavily Democrat states.

So, we may not be able to say that New Jersey and Virginia will predict any sort of results in 2010, but the New Jersey exit polls evidence the lack of political clout Barack Obama now possesses and how irrelevant he was in the voters’ minds in New Jersey on Tuesday.  Based on the exit poll results, he very much was a negative factor to Corzine’s reelection bid, neutral at best. That his agenda is completely bogged down in his own party in Washington, DC, shouldn’t surprise anyone.