A midterm is an exam you don’t much want to give to students who don’t much want to take it. It’s too early in the semester. You’ve hardly had a chance to cover the most important material, and the exam freaks everyone out: you lose a whole week of the course just wrangling the panic. It can also feel bogus. No one studies enough, their answers are half-baked, and everyone knows the final exam counts a whole lot more.

A midterm election isn’t usually all that different. Turnout is low, the issues are mostly phony, and everyone knows that the Presidential election matters more. All that’s true of this week’s midterm election, too—but it was still a test, and the Democratic Party flunked.

All over the country, Democratic candidates lost races they thought they’d lose and, worse, a great many they thought they’d win—though quite why they thought they’d win those races is hard to say. A good political rule of thumb might be that when you won’t let your President campaign for you, you ought to worry about whether you could win any election, anywhere. In 2010, Democrats lost control of the House; in 2014, they lost control of the Senate. In 2016, they might well lose control of the White House. Or, this year’s election results might turn out to be a fluke; 2016 could go the other way. No one knows: political forecasting is less a realm of knowledge than a form of entertainment and, above all, a business. Still, the 2014 election looks more like part of a pattern than an aberration. Liberals’ grasp on American political culture and on the operation of American politics has been weakening for decades, not least because the rules of play have been set by conservatives. Practices and regulations regarding the raising and spending of money, the nature of political consulting and political advertising, and the press’s coverage of politics have generally been the product of the forces of conservatism. The Democrats’ chief contribution to the machinery of American politics, lately, has been the adoption of digital tools as campaign aids, the importance of which is nearly always wildly overstated. Sure, MoveOn.org helped get Obama elected in 2008. But in the history of American politics, the consequences of the Reagan-era F.C.C.’s abandonment of the Fairness Doctrine, in 1987, will be an entire chapter; MoveOn will be a Page Not Found.

At its best, a political party is a set of principles made manifest in a course of action. In this year’s midterms, neither party neared that standard. But since it is the Democrats who lost, it is the Democrats who’ve got to decide what lessons to learn. And they’ve got plenty of places to start. Democratic Party leaders have acted as if they believe that, between knowing how to use the Internet and espousing views typically considered more appealing to younger voters, the party’s future is assured. This is a dangerous misconception, and it lies behind a laziness of purpose. “Elect me because the G.O.P. is nuts” is no sounder a campaign message than “Elect me because Obama caused Ebola.” One reason that so many Democratic candidates so often fail to say much of anything substantial is that they prefer, instead, to wait for their Republican opponents to say something execrable. The easiest place to see this is in the Democrats’ daffy gender strategy, which might be termed the Todd Akin Plan. As with the Democratic Party’s appeals to African-American voters, the Akin Plan involves relying on the Party’s past achievements—in this case, touting its record on reproductive rights—rather than offering an impressive or even a well-stated agenda. The G.O.P. does the same thing when it appeals to voters by touting its record on gun rights. The difference between these two examples—His and Hers—is that the G.O.P. isn’t done talking to men when it finishes talking about guns, but the Democratic Party is done talking to women when it finishes talking about uteruses. This is why the Akin Plan is, most of all, insulting.

You can earn votes by pointing out that your opponent is even worse than you are, but you can’t run a political party that way. And it’s no way to run a government. The Akin Plan only works—when it works—not because the Democratic Party has accomplished so much, but because the fight for equal rights has gone so badly. Very little that women fought for in the nineteen-seventies and eighties has actually been achieved. Between the reduction of a struggle for equality to the defense of abortion and the rise of the New Right, women got, instead of maternity leave, breast pumps and “mommy wars.” Instead of government-sponsored day care and early childhood education they got welfare-to-work and the second shift. Instead of equal pay, it was power suits and just-work-harder. And, instead of equal representation, women are left with male politicians who pander to “female voters,” which is possible, election after election, only because so many political goals that so many women and men care about remain unrealized.

The Akin Plan, in short, is a scam; it’s also a very bad plan. But it’s not, of course, the whole reason that Democrats lost so badly at the polls this week. That had to do with the economy, with U.S. foreign policy, and with the President, who seems to have acquired from his party the habit of steering clear of saying much of anything substantial in favor of waiting for Republicans to say something execrable.

Ask any kid who’s been writing longhand in blue books all week: a midterm exam is a drag. Still, it’s an excellent chance to figure out how to avoid failing the final. It’s a pain in the neck, but it’s also a kick in the pants.

Read more analysis and commentary at our 2014 midterms hub.