If Obama manages to get beaten then anything that hurts the party is going to be like beating a dead horse.
Oh, things can get a LOT worse for the Democrats than simply losing the White House in November.
EDIT:
This is already a party whose conventional wisdom is that the only way to win is to become Republicans. That perception is cracking, and if Obama wins, it will crack quite a bit more (though it's premature to say it'll shatter, especially with today's headlines featuring his adoption of the manufactured "Social Security crisis"). If Obama loses, then 2012 will produce a candidate to the right of Clinton, and 2016 is likely to do the same. In the meantime, while the Dems may keep their Congressional majority, they will become even more useless than they've been for the past two years.
America will deserve whoever it elects.
Yeah, I'm about sick of hearing that. To suggest that the entire country deserves to suffer because a slim plurality picked a greater-evil candidate in a rigged electoral system...well, you know better than that and are clearly engaging in hyperbole, but I still find it a pretty obnoxious statement.