Here's an interesting contemporary reaction to the disaster that was the 1994 Election.  I found it dredging through the backfiles of LexisNexis.  It comes from an article titled, "Sorting Through the Post-Election Rubble: a Democratic Perspective" by Fred Yang and appeared in the 12/94-1/95 issue of "Campaigns & Elections":

No amount of spin-doctoring can change what happened on November 8: we Democrats got an old-fashioned thrashing at the polls. With Democrats losing control of the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years, along with control of the Senate and 10 gubernatorial seats, the pundits have taken to calling this election the "Revolution of 1994."

But was 1994 a revolution or an evolution? While no one can deny that November 8 was a very good day for the Republicans, it remains to be seen whether the results constitute a mandate for the GOP or simply a rebuke of the Democrats.  Obviously, Democrats and Republicans will be battling along these lines all the way to November 1996.

In terms of how Democrats should position themselves for the next two years, the midterm elections offer the following lessons, most of which are dismaying, but a few that are encouraging.

1. The most important lesson of 1994 is the voters' continued frustration and impatience with the status quo. The bad news for the Democrats in 1994, and potentially for the Republicans in 1996, is that the American voter wants change and wants it fast. When asked in a post-election survey by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal to explain the Republican victories, an overwhelming number of voters attributed the results to people wanting change in Washington.

Unfortunately for Democrats, we became identified as part of the status quo.

2. The most fundamental mistake Democrats made after 1992 was believing that "change" is a noun, not a verb. After Bill Clinton's election as president, voters felt they had given Democrats the "keys to the car" and expected to go places. The results of the 1994 elections clearly show that voters believe the country hasn't gone anywhere, much less gotten out of the driveway.

What Democrats failed to realize until too late is that running on change is not enough: We must do something and we must do a better job of communicating our successes.

3. The American voters were trying to send a message to Bill Clinton, but not the message that the Republicans wished. To a certain extent, the voters were sending a message on November against big government and high taxes. But this was a not a rejection of Bill Clinton; rather, it was a message to the President to get his administration back to his 1992 "New Democrat" agenda of efficient government and economic security. In other words, voters are asking for an adjustment in the ship of state, not a change of direction.

In the post-election NBC/WSJ survey, for instance, only 19 percent of respondents (including just 21 percent of Republicans) said the election returns represented people voting "against President Clinton and his agenda,"  compared to 53 percent who said people were voting for change in Washington.

4. Republicans were largely successful because of what they were not (Democrats), not what they were for. Most Republican consultants tout the effectiveness of the "Contract with America" in the past election, but this claim reminds one of the age-old riddle, "Does a falling tree in the forest make any noise if no one is around?" The fact is that very few voters were even aware of this contract during the election: just 31 percent had heard of the Contract in a late October NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Moreover, very few Republican candidates ran television ads promoting their signing of the contract, while scores of Democrats ran commercials attacking their opponents for supporting a proposal that would endanger Social Security and Medicare. Granted, losing 52 seats in the House does not indicate the Democratic message was successful, but neither should Republicans believe the American people gave them a mandate to implement the entire contract.

In fact, one fight that Democrats should feel very comfortable waging is opposing the GOP's proposal for a capital gains tax cut for the rich.

5. Democrats ran very badly among white men and Perot voters; for the party to make any kind of a comeback in 1996, we need to make inroads with these constituencies. Just 39 percent of white men voted for Democratic House candidates in 1994, compared with 49 percent in 1992. Our surveys  indicate that white men are the most economically insecure segment of the electorate,  and that President Clinton's focus on the economy was the glue that kept these voters with the Democrats....