In 2010, Democrats went to the American people with a potent record of accomplishment undertaken in the wake of an event of great consequence — the financial meltdown of September 2008. They passed three major pieces of legislation against nearly universal Republican opposition, including the national health-care system they’d been laboring to create off and on since 1948. Two auto companies were taken over.

The difference is that in 2002, Bush and the Republicans ran on their record. In 2010, Obama and the Democrats are running away from theirs. It’s not that they don’t believe in what they did. It’s that the voters don’t believe in it, and they know it.

There was really no sense in running away. As we all know from the fates of sorry extras in bad disaster movies, you can’t outrun a tsunami. You can only let it hit, hope you survive and then see what you can make of what’s left afterward. Or what’s right.