Members of the US House of Representatives have gone home to campaign for re-election. Senators will follow after finishing their business in Washington this week. The Obamas are heading for a beach vacation on Martha's Vineyard. The question that will linger behind in the capital is how bad the November midterms are likely to be for the party in power. Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, made a faux pas, but not an unrealistic prediction, when he recently stated that Republicans could capture control of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, refuses to consider this possibility.

But whatever face Democrats choose to put on their current predicament, their prospects for 2010 look bleak. At best, they will lose dozens of seats in the House and several in the Senate. At the worst, they could face a repeat of the debacle of 1994, when a politically stumbling Bill Clinton lost control of both houses of Congress for his party for the first time in nearly half a century. The Tea Party movement of that year was Newt Gingrich's no less radical “Contract with America”, which nationalised disparate local races around an angry, anti-government message.

If something like the 1994 “revolution” happens this year, the activist period of Barack Obama's presidency will be over and a season of Democratic despair and recriminations will follow. While there will be plenty of blame to go around, the largest share will belong to Mr Obama himself, for failing to associate himself with the idea of limited government that is fuelling the right's resurgence.