In the wake of last week’s elections and the flurry of “conventional wisdom” (read: warmed-over bullshit) declaring that the Democrats are “in trouble,” the White House is worried about its political prospects and has taken to debating whether or not it will pursue deficit reduction as a political strategy:

On the political side, Obama can help moderate Democrats avoid some tough votes in an election year and, perhaps more importantly, calm the nerves of independent voters who are voicing big concerns with the big spending and deficits. Even if Obama succeeds – and that’s a big if – it will be tough for many Democrats to sell themselves as deeply concerned about spending after voting for the stimulus, the bailouts, the health care legislation and a plan to address global warming, four enormous government programs.

“Democrats have to reassure voters we are not being reckless,” said a Democratic official involved in the planning. “The White House knows this and that’s why we’ll be hearing a lot about reducing the deficit early next year. Democrats owned this issue for the past four years and cannot afford to cede it to Republicans now.”

Last week, I pointed out that it isn’t really helpful for Democrats to try to draw any broader lessons from the elections in Virginia and New Jersey (other than turnout is key).  In Virginia, the voters who sent Bob McDonnell to Richmond had little in common with the voters who sent Barack Obama to Washington.  51 percent of voters in last week’s election voted for John McCain in 2008, and 37 percent of all voters self-identified as Republicans (compared to the 33 percent who identified as Democrats).

What’s more, if survey data from earlier this year is at all accurate, Virginia’s “independents” – who are apparently considered a proxy for the country at large – lean mostly to the right, with the vast majority identifying as either moderate or conservative.  This makes sense.  Genuinely independent voters don’t actually care much about politics.  Self-identified independents are in most cases voters who aren’t particularly thrilled with party politics but do have a defined ideology.  That is, they do prefer one party over the other, they just don’t like to say it out loud. As for New Jersey, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to see an unpopular, vaguely corrupt incumbent lose to a crusading reformist.

Still, even if you could take something useful away from last week’s elections, it’s still the case that that “something” has almost nothing to do with deficits and everything to do with the poor economy and a general sense that the government isn’t actually doing anything about it.  A recent Pew survey found that there is simply a generalized anti-incumbent sentiment among the electorate driven by a sense that nothing is improving.  Cutting spending and focusing on deficit reduction would ensure that nothing improves.  In the absence of government-driven demand, the economy could take an even further dip, which would almost certainly cost Democrats at least one chamber of Congress.

Insofar that the Democrats have electoral woes – and I’m not convinced that they do – the solution is to double-down and work harder to pass legislation on health care, job creation and the environment. Of course, with the Senate the way it is, that will be difficult.  But legislative and political success are tied together, and if Democrats can manage the former they will almost certainly find the latter.