That is the essence of the message from Obama’s closest political guru:

President Obama’s top political guru said Tuesday that he believes 70 House races and 15 Senate races are in play this fall. … Plouffe painted a picture of a dire electoral landscape in which, if Democrats were to lose the majority of those races, their losses would be massive.

Robert Gibbs’s admission in July that the House could be lost is now becoming conventional wisdom. The best Plouffe can do, it seems, is manage expectations.

But there is no spinning this one. There will be plenty of finger-pointing, but the Democrats who blindly followed the White House and their House and Senate leadership, pooh-poohed the Tea Party movement, ignored the polling on ObamaCare, and convinced themselves that the left’s time had come have no one to blame but themselves.

As for the White House, it will no doubt declare that, however severe the thumping in November, none of this is a reflection on Obama. It is a “tough environment” and the “economy is bad” — as if these were weather phenomena, unrelated to the president’s agenda and leadership. There may be some reshuffling of the White House team, but it remains to be seen whether there will be any self-reflection. Heck, this crew can’t even admit they got the quote on the White House rug wrong. Alas, they seem more unintelligible than usual:

President Barack Obama’s spokesman said Tuesday the White House was correct to attribute a famous quotation in the rug’s pattern to Martin Luther King Jr., even though the civil rights leader acknowledged being inspired by a 19th-century abolitionist, Thomas Parker. “It was not us that thought he said it, it was many people that believed — rightly so — that he said it,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

At some point the “Will Hillary run?” buzz will start. But only if she starts boosting her profile and making the case that her record is something to be proud of.