I know that this is conventional reporting wisdom, particularly at the WaPo, but I think that there were many other reasons for the Republicans losing the Congress last fall:

Swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war, Democrats have seen their efforts stymied under realities more complicated than they found on the campaign trail.

Emphasis mine. In fact, if that were the case, the Dems wouldn’t be having so much dissension in the ranks, and difficulty in coming up with a politically palatable position. If the voters really wanted to simply end the war, then the Dems could simply defund it. But despite reporter Julie Davis’ breezy assertion, the Republicans lost for lots of reasons, some of them war related, some not, and it’s politically perilous to make such assumptions about what the voters wanted, other than that they were tired of Republicans.

The Donks’ problem was in fact nailed by the President in the State of the Union, in which he noted that while he wasn’t sure what the voters had voted for, he was confident that they weren’t voting for failure. Yet that is exactly what the Dems seem to want, or at least accept as a fait accompli.