I really, truly, have a hard time believing that the American people deep down inside want the the selfish, do-everything-you-can-to-help-the-rich/screw-the-poor/decimate-the-middle-class policies the right seems to embrace, yet here we are.

Of course they don't.  And the folks who voted Republican obviously don't see it that way.  They have a different narrative, a different world view, with different heroes and heroines and different villains. 

There is a yawning narrative gap now.  The Republicans have a simple narrative: the economy sucks, Obama and the Democrats have been in power for two whole years.  So vote Republican unless you want more of the same.

On the other side, the Democrats' narrative is...well, there must be a narrative, right, because we're talking about professional politicians and skilled, experienced people who know that competing narratives are important in affecting election outcomes, that if the other side has a narrative that resonates even somewhat and your side doesn't really have a narrative that resonates or inspires any confidence, you might, well, get shellacked.  Right? 

You've reached the conclusion that the Democrats often are really bad at messaging (yes, often--BClinton was good at it and that's one reason why he won.)  Messaging needs to be easily connectable to a believable narrative to be effective.  Like Genghis wrote, "Tell me a story."  Democratic pundit E.J. Dionne, Jr. reached a similar major  conclusion in his column "The Next One Matters More": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/02/AR2010110207190.html (free registration may be required) 

Come on, Stilli. There was indeed consensus. Remember that whole Democratic convention thing in Denver? It served a larger purpose than just being a showcase for the lights of the Democratic party to play rock star. Delegates from every state in the nation came together and formed a consensus on what the Democratic platform was to be. Democratically ... with a boatload of hoary rules to ensure that the minority opinion was given air and the whole mess. They wrote it down.

Then the national candidate: Barack Obama, took the platform to the voters and provided a concrete and specific set of policies and plans to make that real. He published them in serious places like actuarial journals with implementation specifics in contrast to McCain's specious non-specific platitudes ... he even signed it with his name. We had a great national debate - much of it was televised. And while the economy didn't completely crumble until late in that process, the Democratic platform still provides a pretty decent road map and priority list for addressing an ailing economy both in general principles and specific policy which Obama adhered to during the campaign.  Ultimately America decided that Obama's very specific plans and the Democratic platform sounded good and we'd like the Democratic party to implement them, forming a national consensus with our votes - overwhelmingly voting Democrats into every station in government.

Done. That's the interplay between the voters and the elected officials in our representative democracy which occurs every four years ... pretty much the wiktionary definition of consensus. It doesn't matter how many polls they take or how many millions of dollars people who weren't happy with the consensus decision spend to undermine it. The consensus was indeed reached. The fortitude to hold that course in a storm and fight with everything they have to deliver is the measure of a public servant. The latitude for adjusting course to avoid rocks should not be construed as carte-blanch to unilaterally redraw the charts immediately upon winning election.

This election result makes sense to me. And to a lot of other people who have been warning the party for a year and a half that the course of action Democrats have been following would yield this exact result. It turns out tossing those people under the doghouse and trying to "message" instead of returning to the consensus course didn't make the observations any less prescient. You just don't like the answer to the riddle.