The exhausted-looking president who appeared before reporters after his party lost control of the Senate was determined not to give them a word to replace “shellacking”, the infamous soundbite he provided when Democrats were similarly polished off in the House of Representatives during 2010.

“It doesn’t make me mopey,” Barack Obama insisted at the post-election press conference, in the East Room of the White House four weeks ago. “[This result] energises me because it means that this democracy is working. People in America were restless.”

But the presidential energy was hard to see at first. Obama’s rumpled body language spoke of 2,114 days in office clearly weighing on frustrated shoulders. For a while, “mopey” appeared to be an entirely appropriate update on “shellacked”.

Not only did he seem physically defeated, but the president also spoke of a need for new ideological compromise with the triumphant Republican leadership, joking of working it out over bourbon with the Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell and letting the House speaker, John Boehner, beat him at golf.

However, four weeks on from the drubbing of 4 November, even Obama’s critics are instead beginning to wonder whether something snapped that day in the ornate finery of the East Room.

Rather than meeting rivals on their terms or continuing with the same uninspiring stalemate that many supporters blame for their midterm defeat, the president has delighted those on the left of the party by running hard in the opposite direction.

Within a blistering few days, the new Obama infuriated Republicans by granting legal status to 5 million undocumented immigrants; announced a historic deal with China over climate change; and defied powerful corporate interests by ruling that the internet should be kept universally available, under so-called “net neutrality” rules.

From the wreckage of his party’s defeat, a president appears to have been reborn. This is a president who bears much more in common with the firebrand elected in 2008 on a message of hope and change than the frustrated figure who had governed ever since.

“Since the election we have started to see the 2008 Obama and it’s been really exciting,” says Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a leading fundraising group for liberals in the party. “The reason Democrats performed so badly in the midterms is because the party is really lacking a strong brand identity and the leadership is clearly recognising that something needs to change.”

Behind the scenes, the president has matched his sudden burst of executive action by dispatching collaborators: killing off a proposed budget deal, for example, that was struck between moderate Democrats and Republicans in Congress and would have restored tax breaks for big business.

Even the toughest challenges have been met with unexpected resolve. Despite aides previously promising there would be no bloodletting after the midterms, Obama sacked his defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, the last Republican in his cabinet, and let it be known he was blaming him for the administration’s lacklustre Middle East policy.

Obama looks on as the defense secretary, Chuck Hagel, talks about his resignation. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP

More optimistic liberals like Taylor point to other developments on Capitol Hill, such as the promotion of leftwing darling Elizabeth Warren to the Democratic Senate leadership committee and a similar reshuffle in the House minority leadership, as signs that their wing of the party may now be in the ascendancy.

“Beyond Obama, this is the larger rift: there has been a struggle for the heart and soul of the Democratic party between the corporate/Wall Street wing and the Elizabeth Warren/economic populist wing that’s been ongoing for years,” Taylor says. “What we are seeing now is that [the] middle-of-the-road, corporate approach doesn’t work. Voters are repudiating the idea that Democrats should act like Republicans.”



Whether this proves a correct reading of the midterm tea leaves remains to be seen, of course. For now, the White House is rather less keen to portray its post-election president as a man reborn.

Asked about the recent flurry of progressive moves on immigration, climate and net neutrality, Obama’s aides insist these are simply a continuation of previously stated priorities.

“President Obama has been crystal clear,” the deputy press secretary, Jen Friedman, told the Guardian. “He will continue to do everything he can to help strengthen the middle class, create more opportunity and make sure that we’re growing faster as an economy and staying competitive.”

One reason for the reluctance to publicly burn all bridges with Republicans is a hope that deals can still be reached on issues like the budget, tax reform and war reauthorisation, where both sides need to show voters they can put the dysfunction of recent years behind them.

But there is a marked shift of emphasis from the conciliatory tone on display immediately after the midterm results came in.

“[Obama] will work with Congress where he can to seek common ground and look for areas of overlap, but when Congress refuses to act on policies that are right for the country, the president will act within his legal authority to do what is necessary to serve the American people,” added Friedman.

It is also true that several of the biggest announcements of recent days have been a long time in the making. Officials worked for months behind the scenes to craft the Chinese climate change deal. Similarly the executive action on immigration reform was begun over the summer, when Obama publicly tasked his administration with finding ways around a stubborn Congress.

But what is undeniable is that these were moves he felt unable to make before the midterm elections. Nervous Senate Democrats explicitly asked the White House to hold off on relaxing immigration laws, for fear such an action would damage their chances in swing states where Republicans were campaigning heavily against it. Climate change was an equally tricky subject for many Democrats already opposed to White House energy policy over the Keystone oil pipeline.

A more troubling question for the White House is whether it was all worth it. If their caution failed to stop the party losing heavily in the midterms, what was the point in treading so carefully? Could the progressives be right that a bolder president would have galvanised voters more readily? After all, it was what drove many to vote for him in the first place.

“Whatever the reason for all this, the 2008 election was a validation that progressive principles are winning principles and it’s very encouraging to see a turn back toward those principles,” says Taylor. “The net neutrality policy that he put out is the same one that he campaigned on. Taking bold action on immigration is the reason a lot of people chose to support him in 2008.”

Glimpses of the new White House logic could also be seen in the post-election analysis of turnout figures by the press secretary, Josh Earnest, who said the president was likely to be more focused now on appealing to those who hadn’t turned out to vote in the midterms than listening to those who had.

It is an incendiary idea among Republicans, and there is no doubt the new political energy in Washington is contagious.

Republicans are fuming at what they regard as unconstitutional abuses of executive authority, some even threatening to dis-invite Obama from next year’s State of the Union address to Congress.

Obama participates in the annual turkey pardoning ceremony, at the White House Photograph: Larry Downing/Reuters

More conservative Democrats, such as the New York senator Chuck Schumer, have stepped up their criticism in recent days of Obama’s few previous progressive achievements, such as healthcare reform.

Others on the left of the party would prefer to see him concentrate on what they see as the successes of Obamacare and campaign for extensions in Medicare, as well as new reform areas such as student debt relief and increases to the minimum wage.

But the reality is that without either chamber of Congress under Democratic control in his last two “lame duck” years, Obama’s best opportunities for radicalism may have been squandered. The battle is more likely to express itself in the race for the party’s nomination in 2016.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is heavily promoting Elizabeth Warren’s message as an alternative to the mainstream favourite, Hillary Clinton, and will shortly send its first organiser to New Hampshire, to start pushing candidates to adopt the more aggressive policies it wished Obama had followed through on while he had the chance.

Even if Warren doesn’t stand, and she is decidedly lukewarm in public, her fanclub hopes that the last two years of a bolder and more progressive Obama will help pull the party in her direction in time for a fresh assault on Congress and the White House in 2016.

“Whoever runs for the nomination should the embrace the Elizabeth Warren economic agenda,” says Taylor. “This is a moment of real crisis; people are very unhappy with the direction the country is going and it requires some audacious thinking.”

