Last week, by a vote of 143-50, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California was overwhelmingly elected leader of the Democratic minority for the next Congress over token opposition from Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina. Democrats also reelected the rest of their House leadership team, even though they had just suffered their worst electoral defeat since 1938.

The vote showed that most Democrats still believe they did nothing to deserve their stunning electoral defeat this month. They blame the economy instead of their policies, and they have apparently convinced themselves that there’s no relationship between the two.

While President Obama did inherit a difficult economy, the situation has grown worse in the years since. The recovery has been shallower than expected. We have lost more than seven million jobs since Pelosi became speaker, and more than three million since Obama was sworn in and signed the $787 billion stimulus package.

And yet Democrats this year essentially ran on the slogan “It would have been worse.” And of course they got shellacked, leaving the Obama coalition broken into a thousand pieces.