If Dems keep their Senate majority then Reid (if he wins) or Schumer become the face of their leadership in Congress, assuming Pelosi is no longer speaker. This could be a good thing as neither of those guys is at all telegenic and both are rather obnoxious. Also 0bama won’t be able to blame all his woes on the congressional GOP majority if he still has one house with his party in control.
Moreover, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy on the part of the country club a-holes who still think they run the party. "So-and-so 'can't win' so we won't give so-and-so money." Well screw that. If anything the Tea Party has shown it can fund its own damn candidates.
I have been as loyal a Republican as you'll find, but Rush had this right: if the Republicans do not GET BEHIND THIS MOVEMENT AND GET THEIR HEADS OUT OF THEIR RECTAL CAVITIES, THEY WILL BE THE "THIRD PARTY."
They are starting to look very much like the Whigs, who ignored the issue of slavery when the rest of the nation was finally waking up to it, and they died to be replaced with a party that would address slavery. The biggest single issue today is not abortion, and it's not even terrorism. It's the continued, unrelenting growth of government and the establishment of a permanent political class that thinks it can ignore elections. We already see that the Democrats will be thrown out. The myopic Republicans better get a clue, and quick.