I currently am working at a local grocery store in rural Maine.
One of my coworkers, whom I'll call "Nancy", didn't vote last Tuesday.
Interestingly, just two weeks prior, she lost her eligibility for MaineCare. Her case worker at DHHS was pretty blunt about why - "You can blame Governor LePage", she told Nancy - referring to his decision to turn away federal health care funding for 70,000 working class Mainers.
So she had a personal reason to vote the bum out, so to speak, yet didn't go to the polls.
When she told me this on Wednesday, I asked her why. She said "I don't believe that the other guy (meaning Mike Michaud) would have fixed it."
Our message in 2014 was basically "they're crazy" and "we don't like President Obama". Here in Maine, we had an added wrinkle in that the political elite were obsessed with getting Eliot Cutler's supporters for his independent campaign to come over to the Democratic side - and unfortunately in the press and in the bubble of the campaign, this became their entire message.
The one thing Nancy wanted to hear - that Mike would give her health care again - got lost in the shuffle, as did Nancy's vote.
If Democrats can't or won't talk about things that directly affect people's daily lives, particularly around populist economic issues, we will continue down this road of boom during presidential years and busts during midterms.