I've been reading/listening to a good bit of discussion about this election and one thing that jumped out at me was the case the Obama completely gutted the Democratic party.

He was a personally likable/popular president that kept shoving unpopular policies. He didn't feel much pain from it due to his personal popularity, but his party suffered significant damage. I forget the exact numbers, but over 1000 local, state and federal Democrat office-holders have lost their seats since Obama came into office. He had a majority in both houses of Congress and lost both. The majority of state legislatures and overwhelming majority of state governors are GOP controlled. It was an interesting angle I hadn't really thought much about.

The tragedy for Republicans was that the worst candidate won. The tragedy for Democrats was that they had no one better to run.