Voters in Alaska, Arkansas and South Dakota all replaced their Democratic senators with Republicans on Tuesday. Those same voters raised the minimum wage in their states. In Nebraska, 65 percent of voters supported the conservative Republican Senate candidate, while nearly 60 percent voted to increase the minimum wage.

Here’s a related puzzle: How did economic inequality begin 2014 as “the defining challenge of our time” and “a fundamental threat to the American dream,” in the words of President Obama, but finish Election Day as an afterthought, at best a segue, for Democrats?