A remarkably revealing portrait.

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.

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.

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

'I haven't used the veto pen very often since I've been in office,' Obama told NPR. 'Now, I suspect there are going to be some times where I've got to pull that pen out. And I'm going to defend gains that we've made in healthcare; I'm going to defend gains that we've made on the environment and clean air and clean water.'

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.

That does almost nothing to address voters' concerns, which remain a potent factor in the campaign. The bottom line is, there's a reason Republicans keep pushing so hard against Obamacare: So far, it's working.