National Journal's Editorial Director and former AP Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier is well respected in liberal circles, and he starts his Monday blog post with a startling pronouncement: "Dem Party is F****d." According to Fournier, that was the subject line of an email sent to him Sunday by someone he described as "a senior Democratic consultant with strong ties to the White House and Capitol Hill."

In other words, this was not some back bench operative working for a struggling Democrat in a red state.

This is a high-powered consultant who is obviously rattled by the reality of ObamaCare sinking in with the public, and referenced both a Los Angeles Times story about ObamaCare "sticker shock" and a Josh Barro column criticizing Obama's pledge that "you can keep your health plan" in the email.

The Barro column from Business Insider last week says that "was never a reasonable pledge and it's being proven false," something this particular consultant had predicted.

The LA Times story, written by reporter Chad Terhune, describes the recently shocked as "middle class consumers (who) are staring at hefty increases on their insurance bills as the overhaul remakes the healthcare market."

The story quotes a letter from a young woman to a California insurance company executive complaining "I was all for ObamaCare until I found out I was paying for it." This seems to support the consultant's notion that "although recent criticism of the healthcare law has focused on website glitches.... experts say sharp price increases... have the greatest potential to erode public support for President Obama's signature legislation."

Or, as the consultant's email so translated; the "Dem party is f****d."

Whether or not this plays out is yet to be seen, but the 2010 midterms were a referendum on ObamaCare more than any other single factor, and 2014 seems headed in the same direction.