Still a center-right country?

It's always tricky to read too much into the results of off-year elections, but last night couldn't have been good news to Obama and the Dems. Republicans won big in New Jersey and Virginia where the president spent precious political capital trying to ensure Democrats held on. Exit polls indicate that the young and first-time voters that swept Obama to power aren't as willing to turn out for other candidates just because they're endorsed by the president or have a D by their name. On the other hand, the favored candidate of the tea party insurgents lost in New York.

More interesting to me is that legalized same-sex marriage lost again in a region not known for social conservatism. As Rod Dreher writes today supporters of same-sex marriage will blame the result on bigotry and homophobia, but maybe a majority of Americans still see the value in preserving the traditional definition of marriage. Maybe they understand the arguments in favor of SSM, but simply don't buy the underlying assumptions that support them -- as in sexual orientation is the determinative equivalent of race, and the rights of two people in love trump every other consideration.

What does it all mean? The conventional wisdom after the 2008 Democratic tsunami was that the US was no longer a center-right country, and the GOP was destined to be a permanent minority. If nothing else, last night's results show that that assessment may have been premature. Politics is a lot like football, a team (or political party) is never as good as they look in their biggest win and never as bad as they look in their worst defeat. There's always next week or next year.

OK, back to more important subjects . . .