Just keep telling yourself that the mysterious "democratic base" was complacent and not excited for the 2010 elections.
Now why would they be "not excited" about an election. Maybe its because they actually disagree with the HC mandate. Maybe that is why they sat home on the couch instead of voting. Or maybe that is why some democrats voted for republicans because they were pissed off at Obama and the Congress.
You answered your own question, but you apparently failed to see the rational logic behind your answer.
Now you have the simple question of will the "democratic base" be "excited" to support Obama and democrats in 2012? With a terrible economy and the HC issue, I am extremely doubtful, but you are free to see the world with rose-colored glasses.
OK -- you win! Americans want the public sector gutted or at least sold cheaply to profiteering monopolists, lower pay on the same job with no increase in employment, higher taxes on themselves so that tycoons and executives might create more jobs, destruction of liberal gains since the Progressive Era (like the outlawry of mislabeled patent medicines that promised to cure everything but offered only alcohol and opiates), wars for profit... and of course they have decided that to get right with God they had better go Right on politics and economics. Most Americans now believe that amoral evolution is bunk and that Godly creationism is science. Republicans have shown themselves the best allies of Hispanics. The Tea Party is now widely recognized for its intellectual and moral acumen.
...Now for the reality: Congress has never been held in such mass disdain since at least 1948, and Republicans are held much more culpable than Democrats. Homosexual rights are gaining. The economy is better than it was in 2009 without a corrupt boom that would implode if it were tried.
There was practically no shift of voters. Voting usually goes down during a midterm unless people are thoroughly unsatisfied with the incumbent and his Party (extreme examples: 1930 and 2006). The same sort of electorate that America had in 2010 sweeps President Obama and the bare Democratic majority n the Senate into oblivion. Many of the voters of 2008 stayed home out of complacency. That is unlikely to be repeated. Republicans who won as stealth candidates and since showed that they are the same old stuff of the Bush II Administration in their voting habits demonstrate why America un-elected them in 2006 and 2008.
Maybe President Obama went too far and too fast for a near-majority of American tastes. Republicans could have gone to a more moderate agenda as a counterweight to one of the most active Congresses in passing legislation in years. Rescission of everything is appropriate only after the overthrow of an extremist regime.
Meanwhile, President Obama has done about everything that ensures re-election -- namely, achieving his promises to his supporters, avoiding scandals, having successes in foreign policy, and showing competent stewardship of the economy. General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead.
There won't be much polling in the next week, so we aren't going to see much in statewide polling.