A few things to take away from Tuesday's election results:

Barack Obama's got no political coattails if Barack Obama's not on the ballot:

The Democrat president invested himself and his prestige (and his vice president) in both governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, where close ally Tim Kaine is the departing governor and has a second fulltime job as chair of the Democratic National Committee. Didn't help. (Will this hurt Kaine's chances of being Obama's VP pick in 2012?)

Both Democrats still lost, especially Virginia Democrat Creigh Deeds. Virginians enthusiastically returning to the GOP column in a big way electing Bob McDonnell as governor plus a Republican lieutenant governor and a Republican attorney general for only the second time. And the first GOP governor in 12 years.

New Jersey voters love their Democrats until they don't. As they did in the past when embracing Christie Todd Whitman and Tom Kean, Garden State voters threw out an incumbent Democrat (multimillionaire marathoner Jon Corzine, who became so desperate late that he put out an ad mock