Haven't we seen this horror movie before?

The Democratic Party's problem in recent decades has been that instead of showing American voters how much it's doing for them, it runs away from its program like it's fleeing the scene of the crime.

The last time that happened, the achievement was the Affordable Care Act, which was destined to bring health coverage to 20 million middle- and working-class Americans for the first time and to eradicate the inequities that crushed many more with medical bills.

Make no mistake about this: The Republican leadership today is not against the way we have done the job. The Republican leadership is against the job's being done.

Franklin Roosevelt, 1936

Instead of shouting the ACA's virtues from the rooftops, the Democrats let Republicans define the bill as a "disaster" and ridicule it as "Obamacare."

The harvest was the 2014 election, in which the GOP strengthened its majority in the House of Representatives and gained control of the Senate.

Judging from the results of Tuesday's election, the same process is unfolding now. As I write, Democrats have lost the Virginia governorship and possibly the state Legislature, and New Jersey's Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, who was expected to win handily, is locked in a too-close-to-call race.

The lessons of the election will be masticated to a pulp over the next days, weeks and months — probably until the results are in from the November 2022 midterm election. But a few observations are ripe now.

One is that there's always a difference between a party's legislative program and record, and electoral mechanics. Democrats have been fairly good at crafting the first to assist ordinary Americans, and often incompetent at the second. Some of this incompetence falls into the category of inadequate "messaging" skills, which isn't too wide of the mark.