Greg Sargent captures an interesting concession from Chris Van Hollen:
Van Hollen did endorse two key arguments made by liberals. He said that when it comes down to it, the only real way for Dems to win back independents is to fix the economy. And asked if the too-small stimulus was one of the causes of Dem losses, he said: "The Recovery Act should have been larger and more robust."
I can already hear the cries of people saying "But given the Senate's filibuster rule, they got the biggest stimulus they could have gotten." And given that (a) there were only 58 Democratic Senators when the stimulus was passed (Specter hadn't switched and Franken hadn't been seated) and (b) Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson were two of those Democrats, that's a fair argument to make. But it's an argument about a different point.
When the only thing you can get is a half-loaf, taking a half-loaf is usually the right move. The question is whether you celebrate as if you'd actually gotten a full loaf -- or do you honestly assess what you've gotten, and publicly acknowledge that you still need more.
And yes, that's more of a political question than a policy question. But politics creates the context which constrains what policy options are available. And right now, outside of the Fed, there are virtually no policy options available to stimulate economic growth. That may be the result of a political failure, but the impact of that failure extends far beyond politics. In short, if you care about good policy, good politics matters.