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White House officials went to uncommon lengths to feign disinterest in the outcome of gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, even suggesting President Barack Obama was more likely to watch a Chicago Bulls game on TV than tune in to Tuesday's election results.

Denial is just so much easier.

The reality is that, a year after his consequential presidential victory, Mr. Obama is looking increasingly mortal and that has broad implications for the coalition of first-time and previously blasé voters he assembled in 2008. The more he assumes the guise of a conventional politician, brokering deals with Congress, the less he is able to mobilize the once disaffected voters who jumped on his bandwagon a year ago.

Unequivocal Republican triumphs in both states – with margins of victory that not even overenthusiastic conservatives could have predicted – are a sobering reminder for the Obama administration that, if a week is a long time in politics, 52 weeks ago is ancient history.

Mr. Obama has little choice but to pursue the “politics as usual” strategy he vowed he would spurn.

With the Republican gains, already restive Democrats in Congress are going to be increasingly wary about backing far-reaching health-care reform or climate-change legislation in the run-up to their own re-election campaign in 2010.

That was likely to be the case regardless of the outcome Tuesday, which left Democrats shut out of all major state offices in Virginia and gave Republicans a rare lock on the New Jersey governorship. The off-year races in U.S. politics are famously unreliable predictors of voter behaviour in future mid-term Congressional and presidential elections.

“The Obama administration would have preferred to see Democrats win,” noted Peter Enns, a political science professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. “But does it change the way they proceed? It probably has less influence than just the fact that, the closer they are to the mid-term elections, the more cautious any politician would want to be.”

Before this week, Democratic leaders in Congress were adamant that health-care reform would pass before the year is out. Then, on Tuesday, Senate majority leader Harry Reid said he was no longer so sure.

Next year, elections will be held for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives. At least 38 of the 100 Senate seats are up for grabs.

More than anything, the state of the economy will determine how Democrats perform a year from now. But many close races will hang on Mr. Obama's ability to mobilize the young and ethnic voters who turned out for him in 2008.

In his new book, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe points out that, among voters who also cast a ballot in the 2004 presidential election, Mr. Obama only beat Republican nominee John McCain by a single point – 50 per cent to 49 per cent. But among first-time voters and those who had not voted in several years, Mr. Obama's trounced Mr. McCain 71 per cent to 27 per cent.

Mr. Plouffe is dismissive of the irresolute in the Democratic Party who are tempted to abort health-care reform and shelve cap-and-trade legislation in the run up to the mid-terms, writing that “this is looking three yards downfield instead of thirty.”

But much of what impressed seasoned political strategists about the Obama presidential campaign that Mr. Plouffe led – particularly the innovative use of technology to draw in hard-to-reach voters – has been absent from the White House's attempts to sell health-care reform. That may demonstrate the limits of the 2008 campaign strategy.

“These non-habitual voters [were] much more excited about Obama as a person than the set of ideas he brought to the table,” observed Patrick Egan, a professor of politics at New York University. “That makes it hard for him to transfer his appeal to political proposals or other candidates, and that is what we saw in [Tuesday's] elections.”

As Mr. Obama's own approval rating falls to post-honeymoon levels and concerns rise about the snowballing U.S. debt, it is unlikely he can count on either personal appeal or popular policies to ensure Democrats' hold on Congress in 2010. As a result, his best hope may lie in Republicans' foibles.

In-fighting among Republicans helped push the Democratic congressional candidate over the top in a special election held Tuesday in a normally solid Republican district in upstate New York. The election was held to fill the House seat left vacant when Mr. Obama appointed Republican John McHugh as his Secretary of the Army. Mr. McHugh won the seat last year with 65 per cent of the vote.

But the Republican candidate in Tuesday's election was disavowed as too liberal by the party's right wing, which backed the Conservative Party candidate. The Republican withdrew from the race on Saturday and threw her support behind the Democrat, a move that was reportedly stage managed by the White House.

“If I was [White House chief of staff] Rahm Emmanuel, I would say that I was incredibly astute in appointing McHugh as secretary of the Army and putting that seat into play,” quipped Alan Draper, a professor of government at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., which is located in the district.

The militant right's defeat in upstate New York might persuade Republicans to renew with the “big tent” strategy Ronald Reagan so successfully pursued.

Mr. Egan doubts it will: “I would not be surprised if it leads to a redoubling of the efforts to cast out the moderates in the Republican party.”

The now merely mortal Mr. Obama can only hope so.

Konrad Yakabuski is new to The Globe and Mail's Washington bureau, primarily covering politics