As we sit down to the post-midterm ban­quet of blame, a num­ber of items stand out on the menu.

If Warren decides to throw her hat into the ring, she will have to do so sometime in early 2015 in order to have a realistic chance of securing the nomination.

First there is the tra­di­tion­al fare: The par­ty that holds the White House often los­es midterm elec­tions — in this case, the Democ­rats staged a repeat of their 2010 performance.

One might also make a meal out of unreg­u­lat­ed mon­ey cor­rupt­ing the elec­toral process. But that is not an easy excuse to swal­low. Both par­ties spent record amounts for a midterm elec­tion, try­ing to sway vot­ers. For exam­ple, accord­ing to an analy­sis by the Sun­light Foun­da­tion, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­to­r­i­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee spent more than $51 mil­lion dol­lars (all but 2 per­cent of it on neg­a­tive adver­tis­ing) and saw only 17 per­cent of its can­di­dates elect­ed, while the Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee spent more than $37 mil­lion dol­lars (100 per­cent of it on neg­a­tive adver­tis­ing) and had 94 per­cent of its can­di­dates sail into office.

Still, mon­ey talks, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to elec­tions. Accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, con­gres­sion­al can­di­dates who spent more than their oppo­nents won 94.2 per­cent of the time, while in the Sen­ate, where a hand­ful of well-financed Dems were defeat­ed, that fig­ure stood at 81.8 percent.

Or the despair­ing par­ti­san can order that old sta­ple: Tra­di­tion­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ing blocs fail to vote in midterm elections.

This year that was cer­tain­ly true of vot­ers under 30, Lati­no vot­ers and African Amer­i­can vot­ers, who rep­re­sent­ed 19, 13 and 10 per­cent of the elec­torate in 2012, but only 13, 12 and 8 per­cent in 2014. If those who turned out then had turned out now, the results would have looked dif­fer­ent. That is sup­port­ed by an Octo­ber sur­vey by Democ­ra­cy Corps, which asked those who vot­ed in 2012 who they would vote for today. A hypo­thet­i­cal Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial can­di­date beat their Repub­li­can coun­ter­part by 4 per­cent­age points.

As it is, the GOP now con­trols the Sen­ate (and there­by all appoint­ments to the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry) because Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers failed to turn out in suf­fi­cient num­bers yes­ter­day, while the most faith­ful Repub­li­can seg­ment of the elec­torate — those who are old­er, white or male — had no such prob­lem. (The Repub­li­cans also won the bal­lots of 38 per­cent of vot­ers who iden­ti­fied as mem­bers of union house­holds — or 6 per­cent of the total 2014 elec­torate. This indi­cates that orga­nized labor could do a bet­ter job of polit­i­cal education.)

What moti­vat­ed those who did vote? Accord­ing to the exit polls, 45 per­cent of those polled cit­ed ​“the econ­o­my” as their chief con­cern. Yet, with few excep­tions, elect­ed Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­ers shied away from mak­ing pop­ulist appeals — appeals that might have inspired peo­ple to get out and vote their pock­et­books. As In These Times Senior Edi­tor David Moberg has report­ed, accord­ing to a recent Hart Research Asso­ciates poll, giv­en a choice between a Repub­li­can who promised to ​“grow the econ­o­my” and a Demo­c­rat who sup­port­ed cre­at­ing ​“an econ­o­my that works for every­one, not just the wealthy few,” swing vot­ers picked the Demo­c­rat by 22 points.

There was one excep­tion to this dearth of Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­ers who cham­pi­oned pop­ulist pro­pos­als. Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑Massachusetts) criss­crossed the coun­try attempt­ing to gal­va­nize the elec­torate in key Sen­ate races.

So one can end the pity par­ty with just deserts for cor­po­rate Democ­rats: War­ren seems to be con­sid­er­ing a chal­lenge to Wall Street Demo­c­rat Hillary Clin­ton for the party’s 2016 nom­i­na­tion. In Octo­ber, Peo­ple mag­a­zine asked War­ren if she was ​“on board with a run for the White House?” Instead of her pre­vi­ous ​“No,” War­ren replied, ​“I don’t think so.” Then she equiv­o­cat­ed, ​“If there’s any les­son I’ve learned in the last five years, it’s, ​‘Don’t be so sure about what lies ahead.’ There are amaz­ing doors that could open.”

Eri­ca Sagrans is heart­ened by this change of tune. Sagrans is the cam­paign man­ag­er for Ready for War­ren, a group that describes itself as ​“pro­gres­sives ready to sup­port some­one who isn’t afraid to take on pow­er­ful inter­ests like the Wall Street banks that crashed our economy.”

“More need to take Warren’s lead and be hon­est and fear­less about stand­ing up for their beliefs and con­vic­tions in the way that she does,” Sagrans says. ​“She is the kind of Demo­c­rat that the Democ­rats have been yearn­ing for. And War­ren is moti­vat­ing to lots of oth­er kinds of peo­ple as well. I was in Iowa at Tom Harkin’s annu­al steak fry and peo­ple in Hillary Clin­ton t‑shirts came up to us and said, ​‘I love Eliz­a­beth War­ren. She is amazing.’ ”

War­ren has the addi­tion­al advan­tage of not being a pro­fes­sion­al politi­cian. Fol­low­ing the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse, she was pro­pelled into pol­i­tics by the enthu­si­asm of peo­ple who saw in her a straight-talk­ing crit­ic of a failed bank­ing sys­tem and a defend­er of work­ing fam­i­lies. Unlike Clin­ton, she has not cozied up to Wall Street mon­ey or lived much of her adult life in Washington.

Sagrans says that if War­ren decides to throw her hat into the ring, she will have to do so some­time in ear­ly 2015 in order to have a real­is­tic chance of secur­ing the nomination.

War­ren isn’t the only plain-speak­ing pop­ulist eye­ing a run for the White House. Bernie Sanders, the inde­pen­dent social­ist sen­a­tor from Ver­mont, is also con­sid­er­ing declar­ing him­self a can­di­date for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­na­tion. Sagrans sees no prob­lem with that: ​“It would great to have it be a com­pet­i­tive race with a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple and ideas in the mix.”

After all, coro­na­tions have no place in a healthy repub­lic — nor does rule by an elect­ed oli­garchy, which is where, with the 2014 midterms, Amer­i­ca seems to be headed.