An extraordinary electoral defeat last November has left the Democratic Party on life support — not yet dead, but still reeling from the overwhelming “shellacking” it absorbed — and facing structural challenges that few commentators have systematically analyzed.

With a net loss of 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate for the Democrats, a look at the election map shows that our country is almost entirely red, with blue sections mainly situated on the liberal east and west coasts, which is notably different than the pre-2010 map that had some blue in the South and Midwest.