It’s worth stepping back and assessing the breadth and dimensions of the results of the 2014 midterm elections:

• The Republican Party made substantial gains in the Senate, the House, among governorships, and in state legislatures. It now has a comfortable majority in each. The Republican Party “is basically the nation’s governing party,” as my Ethics and Public Policy Center colleague Yuval Levin put it.

• In the Senate, Republicans started the week with 45 seats. They’re likely to end the year (after the December 6 Louisiana runoff) with 54–a net gain of nine seats. Note well: Not since 1980 have Republicans beaten more than two incumbent Democrats. On Tuesday, Republicans defeated four incumbent Democrats–in Arkansas, North Carolina, Colorado, and Alaska–and they’re favored to win in Louisiana. Republicans also won open seats in Iowa, West Virginia, Montana, and South Dakota, all previously held by Democrats.

• It appears as though the GOP increased its total in the House to 250, a net gain of 16 seats. That will give Republicans the highest total since after the 1928 election.

• The GOP will hold at least 31 governorships, including gains made in the traditionally Democratic states of Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

• The GOP now holds 69 of the country’s 99 state houses and senates. (The previous high was 64 chambers in 1920.)

• Republicans will have full control of at least 29 state legislatures, the party’s largest total since 1928.

• In the races for the Senate, House, and governorships, Republicans will have picked up 32 seats (nine in the senate, 19 in the House, and four governorships); Democrats will have picked up just four seat (three in the House and the governorship of Pennsylvania).

• As for the damage the Obama years have done to the Democratic Party, consider this: During President Obama’s first term, Democrats held 60 seats in the Senate. By the end of his term they’ll probably hold 46, a net loss of 14. When Mr. Obama took office in 2008, Democrats had control of 257 House seats; by the end of his term, the likely number will be 185–a net loss of 72 seats. And when Mr. Obama was first sworn in as president, Democrats held 28 governorships; by the end of his term, they’ll hold 18–a net loss of 10 seats.

Prior to Tuesday’s election, the political analyst Stuart Rothenberg wrote, “President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row. In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.” The midterm results were even worse for Democrats than Mr. Rothenberg anticipated. All of which may vindicate this judgment by Michael Barone, who said it looks as if President Obama will leave his party “in worse shape than any president since Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.”