Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. It is a loser's mentality to be consoled by the closeness of the loss or to speculate if only we could have made some slight corrections. Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing. The Dems used to use the same reasoning when they lost. They saw victory in defeat. To use your football analogy, the field goal try to win the game that went wide right spells defeat, whether by a few inches or a few feet.
And I'm not "Pollyannish." Quite the contrary, when I was predicting we would GAIN seats, my view was that ANYTHING short of gains would mean to the drive-by media that we had "lost." Spin is everything.
I read your predictions. Very logical and hopeful, but very wrong. Regardless of how the MSM spins it, the reality of who controls Congress matters much more. I could care less if the MSM spun a few losses on our side as a defeat as long as we controlled Congress or at least one house.
29-30 seats in the House, whatever we lost, is a lot, but it's no different than if we'd lost the House by 2-3 as far as the media is concerned. And in the Senate, even 1-2 losses probably would have meant we couldn't get our judges because of weaklings like Graham, Snowe, etc.
You are confusing how the media reports an event with reality. The media cannot change reality. If we had only lost the House by 2-3 seats, would it really matter in terms of the operation of Congress how it was reported. The media can have its own opinion, but it can't have its own facts.
In 1856, for example, the Republicans found that they had lost a very, very close election. And yes, they made some very slight corrections, identified only four states they needed to capture in 1860, and directed all their energies to those four, which they won, along with the presidency.
It would be a mistake to assume this was some monumental loss, or that the turnout model doesn't work---it can, it just didn't work well this time.
There are plenty of lessons to learn, but firing the coach, the quarterback, and the entire defensive line isn't one of them.