It is always important to keep things in context.
Most of the elections we lost were close ones.
A combination of factors led to the GOP defeat.
There is too much pessimism on these threads as if we were crushed.
I'm not pessimistic, and you are right that something to the tune of 11,000 votes accounted for about four seats, but the fact is many, many of these seats were safe: Foley, Hayworth, DeLay, and in many others, you had a slight GOP advantage that was squandered, esp. considering these were incumbents.