Three months from now, America will go to the polls to elect a new Congress, new governors, and new state legislators around the country. Already, the elections are being treated, at least in part, as a referendum on President Obama.

Traditionally, the president's party fares poorly in midterm elections, a phenomenon due at least in part to a durable suspicion in the United States of giving any one party enough power to actually enact a comprehensive legislative agenda. While the formal constitutional balance of power is sustained by the executive, the legislature and the courts each having their own delineated bailiwicks, in practice electorates often vote for their own vision of distributed power by swinging one way for the president and another for Congress.

For months now, pundits have been predicting a big win for Republicans come November. Were this to occur, it could be interpreted as part of this historical continuum – tied in with Obama's declining popularity ratings and an increasingly glum mood among voters who aren't seeing the fruits of the purported economic recovery.

High levels of unemployment, the roiling emotions around immigration reform, the damage to Obama's image as a hands-on leader created by the Gulf oil spill, an increasingly bitter anti-incumbency sentiment, and growing national anxiety about the size of the American national debt, have all combined to make this election season even more acrimonious than usual and even more difficult for the governing party to navigate.

What makes the "midterms-are-supposed-to-go-badly-for-the-president's-party" analysis harder, however, is the sheer magnitude of Republican failures of governance in the recent past.

Two years ago, President Bush was widely seen as the most inept president of modern times; his party, in Congress, was discredited; the Republican economic agenda was acknowledged by much of the electorate as having landed the world in the worst financial trouble since the Great Depression; and the Republican foreign policy vision, as practised by the firebrand conservatives who had taken hold of the reins of the party, was increasingly distrusted.

Obama's election was part of a broader reaction against GOP priorities. In Congress, Democrats made sweeping gains, and in statehouse races across the country, voters also turned towards Democrats. For the first time in a generation, the party actually controlled government by big enough margins to enact sweeping reforms.

Had they failed to take advantage of this moment, one could easily understand a voter reaction, a backlash based around shattered hopes and a sense of having been sold a bill of goods. But, despite the voices of criticism from some of the activist base, generally the Democrats have not failed. To the contrary, on most of the signature themes the Democrats ran on and won on, they have produced results, despite a concerted "just say no" effort by Congressional Republicans convinced that their best electoral strategy was to prevent any and all legislation supported by the administration from passing.

Healthcare reform passed; financial regulations were enacted; large stimulus packages stopped the economy's freefall and at least temporarily mitigated the worst effects of many state governments' fiscal implosion; student loans were reformed, making it easier for low-income people to attain a college education; and at least some progress has been made on moving the country toward a less carbon-intensive economy. By most measures, the last two years have seen more major legislative changes than any two-year period since the 1930s. (The GOP base instinctually knows this, but that base doesn't carry enough electoral clout to explain why the Democrats are in trouble in this election season.)

Looking back at the last decade, the contrast in governing effectiveness between modern-day Democrats and Republicans is pronounced. And, in many ways, it's a contrast based less around ideology per se than around competence. Put simply, in recent years, the Republicans, at least at a federal level, have become a party of rigid ideologues, and in becoming more ideological they have become increasingly unable to build coalitions to put forward the sorts of big-picture reforms needed to keep the country and the economy thriving.

Even a modicum of collective memory ought to make the critical independent voters in the middle of the political process at least think twice before wanting to stalemate the process by shifting Congressional power back to a Republican party increasingly beholden to the most conservative wing of its base.

And yet, we come back to the great paradox of the moment. The more reforms the Democrats enact, the less happy independent voters – who, presumably, voted for Democrats because they wanted many of these reforms enacted – are.

If this discontent produces the sort of "enthusiasm gap" at the elections hinted at in many recent polls, November could indeed see significant gains for the GOP.

That said, my guess is the gains won't be quite as large as many pundits think, that the much-anticipated rout won't actually occur. There are signs, in recent polls, that as the election nears and more people start paying attention to the debates, voters are starting to return to the Democrats. They might detest incumbents, and, for a variety of reasons, they may feel increasingly disillusioned with the Obama administration, but when push comes to shove most voters also aren't convinced by the GOP message.

Predictions are always a dangerous game in politics, but at this point my guess is that the Democrats will cling on to power, with significantly reduced majorities, in both houses of Congress.