The main thing the voters are saying is this:

"THE ECONOMY SUCKS! AND I'M MAD AS HELL ABOUT IT! I'M GOING TO PUNISH WHOEVER IS PRESENTLY IN OFFICE FOR IT! I don't really care about the long term reaasons for why the economy is bad or when the trouble started it or who did it....and I wouldn't understand that stuff anyway, even if it was carefully explained to me...I just want to get even for my present state of angst, that's all. So I'm gonna punish the incumbents."

It would have worked exactly the same way if there was a Republican president (like McCaine) in Washington right now. The voters would have punished the incumbents, and the Democrats would all be out celebrating their gains in Congress. ;-D

Seriously, it's just damned funny, because it's sooooo predictable. But you guys get lost in your 2-party mythology and you can't step away from it far enough to see what's really going on. There's only one party in the USA. One party with 2 right wings. One of the right wings looks more to the right than the other...that's the Republicans. Whichever one is in office while the economy is bad gets punished severely at the polls....and that is really all there is to it. The ONE party always wins, because no matter who you elect, it's still in power. It's a velvet dictatorship (in the form of authoritarianism, fortunately, not totalitarianism yet...) that goes through the outward motions of a democracy every 2 years. An empty and meaningless charade. Americans are fooled by the charade, but most of the rest of the world isn't.

The rest of the world, however, can only stand by and watch, because the USA is armed to the teeth. And that is why you are so far in debt. Your outrageous arms spending since the end of WWII has bankrupted your nation. Military hardward is good for only one thing: killing people. That doesn't produce prosperity, except for the arms dealers themselves who get very, very rich.