If one cannot imagine Obama saying such a thing — well, he didn't.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 - 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.

Polls suggest that more and more, opposition to Obamacare is based on voters' personal experience, and not just on what they have heard or read about the law.

In the end, no single group will mean defeat for the Democrat and victory for the Republican in 2016. But President Obama's troubling legacy - a weakened coalition and growing ranks of alienated white voters - could mean a serious post-presidential hangover for Democrats.

In the end, Tuesday's vote represented a repudiation of virtually every notion Democrats embraced in recent weeks as they tried to disregard the growing evidence that they were headed for a historic defeat. Now, the vote is in, and the voters' message can no longer be discounted.

Now that the 2014 elections are over and national politics is all about 2016, Democrats have good reason to worry that, for all his success at the polls, President Obama will leave his party with a toxic legacy.

As Democratic losses mounted in Senate races across the country on election night, some liberal commentators clung to the idea that dissatisfied voters were sending a generally anti-incumbent message, and not specifically repudiating Democratic officeholders. But the facts of the election just don't support that story.