Stuart Rothenberg points out an interesting tidbit in Roll Call; Barack Obama is probably going to set a record for most mid term losses by a president's party in the last 60 years.

When the president took office on January 20, 2009, there were 256 Democrats and 178 Republicans in the House. The Senate was 59-41 Democrat - soon to be 60-41 when Al Franken took his seat a few months later.

The rest, as Obama might like to forget, is history:

President Barack Obama is about to do what no president has done in the past 50 years: Have two horrible, terrible, awful midterm elections in a row.

In fact, Obama is likely to have the worst midterm numbers of any two-term president going back to Democrat Harry S. Truman.

Truman lost a total of 83 House seats during his two midterms (55 seats in 1946 and 28 seats in 1950), while Republican Dwight Eisenhower lost a combined 66 House seats in the 1954 and 1958 midterms.

Obama had one midterm where his party lost 63 House seats, and Democrats are expected to lose another 5 to possibly 12 House seats (or more), taking the sitting president’s total midterm House loses to the 68 seat to 75 seat range.

Most recent presidents have one disastrous midterm and another midterm that was not terrible.

The GOP lost 30 House seats in George W. Bush’s second midterm, but gained 8 seats in his first midterm for a net loss of 22 seats. The party lost 26 seats in Ronald Reagan’s first midterm, but a mere 5 seats in his second midterm for a net loss of 31 seats.

Democrats got shellacked in 1994, losing 54 seats in Bill Clinton’s first midterm, but the party gained 5 House seats in 1998, Clinton’s six-year-itch election, for a net Clinton loss of 49 House seats. (The figures don’t include special elections during a president’s term.)

Looking at Senate losses, Republicans lost a net of 5 seats in George W. Bush’s two midterms, while Republicans lost a net of 7 seats during Ronald Reagan’s two midterms and Democrats lost a net of 8 seats during Bill Clinton’s two midterms. (Again, these numbers do not reflect party switches or special elections.)

Democrats have a chance to tie the number of Senate losses that Republicans suffered during the midterms of Eisenhower, when the GOP lost a net of 13 Senate seats (12 in 1958 and only one in 1954).

Democrats lost 6 Senate seats in 2010 and seem likely to lose from 5 to as many as 10 seats next week. That would add up to Obama midterm Senate losses of from 11 seats to as many as 16 seats.

I think these mid term losses for the president are more evidence how badly the Republicans blew it in 2012. Mitt Romney ran a horrible campaign and Republicans proved themselves to be in the stone age when it came to using modern digital tools in the election. That combination doomed what should have been a landslide victory for a Republican nominee.

The grounds for a Republican victory were never better in the last several decades, with the exception of 1980 - and look what happened there. When given the opportunity to express their displeasure with Obama at the mid terms, voters aren't hesitating. If Republicans had fielded a decent candidate in 2012, the same sentiments driving mid term voters to toss the Dems out would have been present that year.