ASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — In the days before the election, Terry McAuliffe talked the talk.
The Senate would stay Democratic. Jeb Bush would be "gone." Mr. McAuliffe told anyone who would listen, "George Bush has never had coattails" and "We hope George Bush goes to all our highly contested races" to campaign.
Even on the morning after Election Day, Mr. McAuliffe, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, assessed his party's stunning swath of losses with much the same bravado, declaring, "I could clearly make the argument George Bush should have done a lot better last night."
These days, it is disgruntled Democrats who make the argument that Mr. McAuliffe could have done better. In telephone calls and private gossip, grass-roots activists, big donors and presidential prospects alike are assessing the party's trouncing, and for some of them, Mr. McAuliffe is a big target.
"I think we should get rid of him immediately," said Toni Goodale, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser in New York City who was incensed that Mr. McAuliffe did not do more to help H. Carl McCall's campaign for governor of New York. "He's not ready to be the image and the spokesman for the Democratic Party. We need strong moral leadership at the top of the party. We don't need somebody who says, `O.K., let's find the next loophole.' We don't need a cheerleader. We need a leader without the cheer, who looks at this realistically."
Few party loyalists are half as blunt, at least for quotation. But even those who most need Mr. McAuliffe's bulging Rolodex of donors — the 2004 presidential prospects — largely declined to defend his performance, and even his supporters quietly acknowledge the long and well-known bill of particulars against him.
To his critics, the Macker, as the irrepressible Mr. McAuliffe, 45, is known, may be a master fund-raiser and schmoozer, but he was too dependent on the soft money that is the parties are now forbidden to solicit, and a bad example for Democrats who would claim the moral high ground on campaign finance. He is too close to former President Bill Clinton, his patron and golfing partner, who remains toxic to many swing voters. He is too relentlessly optimistic to be an effective spokesman for a party in trouble.
Democrats and Republicans alike have been quick to note that Mr. McAuliffe turned a $100,000 investment in Global Crossing, one of the companies that has emerged as a symbol of corporate wrongdoing, into an $18 million profit after it went public.
In the midterm election, Mr. McAuliffe shipped millions of dollars to Florida to the party's novice nominee for governor, Bill McBride, whose finance chairman was Mr. McAuliffe's father-in-law, in an all-out effort to beat Gov. Jeb Bush. But some Democrats say that money would have been better spent on tight Senate races in other states, and that former Attorney General Janet Reno would have been a stronger candidate than Mr. McBride.
"We needed the couple of points with women she could've given us, and the couple with African-Americans and South Florida and progressives," said Carole Shields, a major donor in Miami. "You add up all those couple of points and you've got a race."
Ms. Shields said she thought last week's results "portends leadership changes at all levels, including the national level."
Mr. McAuliffe declined to be interviewed for this article. But he campaigned hard for the four-year term of chairman two years ago, and party strategists say that there are no obvious candidates to succeed him at the party's next meeting in February. Any effort to open the question could prompt intraparty strife among factions seeking to fill the vacancy.
Most party insiders say Mr. McAuliffe did a solid job under trying circumstances and cannot be held responsible for the party's failure to offer voters an appealing alternative to President Bush's tax cut and prosecution of the war on terrorism. Some noted that his job is to be the Democrats' chief booster, although he was far too optimistic in his predictions. Spokesmen for Mr. Clinton and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said both supported his continuing as chairman.
"I think it's ridiculous," Thomas Nides, a veteran Democratic strategist who ran Senator Joseph I. Lieberman's vice presidential campaign two years ago, said of the criticism.
"The fact of the matter is that if we'd won 10 seats more, Terry would be a hero. This is politics. You take the good with the bad. Terry has done a superior job in doing what a D.N.C. chairman needs to do, which is rally the troops, raise money, motivate people and be an eternal optimist, which is what he is.
"I've talked to a lot of people," Mr. Nides added, "and there is no groundswell to move him out. It just doesn't exist."
A Democratic strategist who has worked with Mr. McAuliffe said that the same traits that left him open to criticism — his cockiness, blarney, optimism and glibness — also helped make him effective.
"Terry gets under people's skin; that's what you need to do as chairman," this strategist said. "Terry is the mechanics guy. Holding him responsible for lack of a national message is like holding the piano tuner responsible for an atonal sonata."
Mr. McAuliffe gets praise from party insiders for working to update donor lists from the state and national parties, and improving other data-processing and communications efforts. But an initial plan to spend millions of dollars on a new party headquarters drew widespread criticism, and officials said it now appeared likely that the existing building would be renovated instead.
In this midterm cycle, Mr. McAuliffe raised about $130 million, most of it in the so-called soft money from major donors that cannot be spent directly to advocate election of a particular candidate, compared to about $180 million raised by Republicans, the majority of it in money from smaller donations that can go directly to support candidates. He has said his goal will be to develop a better network of small donors.
Minyon Moore, a former chief of staff at the Democratic National Committee, and one of several officials recruited by Mr. McAuliffe's staff to call a reporter who asked about his standing, insisted that the party chairman was supposed to be a cheerleader.
"I would be hard pressed to see anybody say Terry McAuliffe was not out front to rally the troops," Ms. Moore said. "Sometimes, he took on people in tougher terms than some in our Democratic family would've liked."
Mr. McAuliffe is hardly the first Democratic chairman to preside over a loss.
"I would say with some perspective, but also some candor, that the job itself is one when the good things happen, you get very little thanks," said Paul G. Kirk, who took over as party chairman after Walter F. Mondale's 1984 defeat and served through Michael S. Dukakis's drubbing four years later.
"When bad things happen." Mr. Kirk added, unable to suppress a rumble of rueful laughter, "you get all the credit for the bad things."