The Democratic party was always likely to win the White House and a larger congressional majority in 2008. Being by far the most intriguing and persuasive figure in either party, Barack Obama turned that likelihood into a certainty. Read those two sentences again and burn them into your brain. They will help get you through the next few months of recrimination, second-guessing, soul-searching, and “Whither conservatism?” discussions — including this one.

Bearing the burdens of an unpopular Republican administration, two protracted wars, and a softening economy panicked by a financial meltdown just weeks before Election Day, John McCain’s campaign would have needed to be flush, flawless, and fortunate to have eked out a win. It was none of the above. The moment I became certain that the GOP had been hopelessly outmaneuvered was when I first saw the Obama ad “Two Extremes.” Underneath a striking sequence of graphics, the narrator said: “On health-care reform, two extremes: On one end, government-run health care, higher taxes. On the other end, insurance companies without rules, denying coverage. Barack Obama says both extremes are wrong.” The rest of the ad was full of reassuring promises. But the key was the opener. On health care, an issue of acute concern to millions of middle-class swing voters, Obama was against both big government and big insurance conglomerates.

Who isn’t?

The second punch landed with another graphics-based ad on health care, “Unravel,” which argued that McCain would tax employer-provided medical benefits for the first time and potentially cause companies to reduce or drop longstanding health-care arrangements. The argument was grossly misleading; McCain sought to replace income- and payroll-tax exclusions at the workplace with tax credits for households — a swap that would reduce taxes for virtually everyone and give families more choice and ownership in their health plans. But there’s no oath in politics compelling candidates to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Combined with Obama’s panoply of proposed tax credits and deductions, his health-care message helped convince many fiscally conservative swing voters that the Democrats were at least as likely to alleviate their tax burden as the Republicans were. In any election dominated by domestic concerns, losing the tax issue will sink the GOP. In this election, the Republican ship of state was already waterlogged and listing, and it didn’t take much to finish her off.

This is not to credit Obama’s marketing gurus alone with victory. The Republican problem was in fact one of substance, of policy. While liberals enjoy agonizing over the electoral difficulties they endure for being such nuanced sophisticates, the opposite is closer to the truth. Conservatism’s governing principles — emphasizing the perils of unintended consequences, the workings of unseen economic and social forces, and the inescapable manifestations of man’s fallen nature — are complex and often counterintuitive. As a result, conservative policy prescriptions often have a lot of moving parts. Because the real world is complicated, and because longstanding social problems cannot be easily solved — or else they would have been long ago — there is a mismatch between practical necessity and political advantage. It’s relatively easy to outline a problem and promise immediate but unspecified government action to address it. It’s far more difficult to explain why government intervention might do more harm than good, and why the best course over the long run might be to resist a “Mr. Fix It” temptation in the short run. In politics, as in much of social life, the pull of immediate gratification explains a lot.

Beware any Republican consultant or conservative activist peddling a solution to the dilemma based entirely on better marketing strategies and campaign tactics. I’ve hung around with political operatives long enough to have learned that they never lose their campaigns. When candidates win, you see, it’s invariably because they listened to the wise consultants. When candidates lose, it’s because they didn’t listen at all, or because they listened to rival consultants peddling a wrongheaded strategy. Hindsight is usually 20/20, but after a lost election it’s 20/10. Every well-wisher outside a campaign feels entitled after its defeat to give detailed explanations of his pet strategy, which clearly would have been more effective than the loser’s. If success famously has a thousand fathers, then electoral failure has a thousand deadbeat dads — around for the fun part but nowhere to be found when the going gets tough.

Should Republicans study and emulate the Democrats’ tactical mastery of new technologies for channeling political passions into campaign cash, volunteers, and new voters? Of course. Were there alternative campaign strategies that might have served John McCain better than those he chose? Undoubtedly. But these are issues of marketing. They come after the issue of message, and the fundamental problem was that Obama’s messages were an easy sell for the political marketplace of 2008. It’s not obvious to me that any amount of sharpened GOP marketing savvy would have made much difference, given the personalities of the two candidates and the circumstances of the national election.

First of all, Obama’s messages were simple. He offered up a lot of programs and promises during the campaign, but he didn’t dwell much on them in his advertising and debate appearances. Partisan, ideological voters may crave details and formulas, but they’re already with you or against you. Early on, the Democrats appreciated that the default position of the American electorate in 2008 would be to toss out Bush and his party. They didn’t need to persuade swing voters with details — such quibbles as how Obama’s campaign promises could be reconciled with fiscal reality. And, as McCain discovered, details can be twisted and misrepresented.

Simple messages such as “We need change,” “Obama’s new and different,” and “Let’s work together” also lend themselves to new forms of marketing through social networks and iconography. Republicans spent a lot of time this year ridiculing the Democrats’ use of imagery, color schemes, audio/visual cues, and “branding.” But where do all those dismissive Republicans shop? Do they really have so little understanding of how people get information and make decisions? Don’t they remember when it was “morning in America”?

Second, Obama’s messages were relevant. The electorate was worried, frustrated, and fed up with President Bush and the Washington establishment. Obama looked and sounded nothing like Bush — easy sale. Imagine a wanderer staggering out of the burning desert. Any cold beverage would seem heavenly, even diet caffeine-free rhubarb fizz. Every time McCain and the conservative intelligentsia pointed out that Obama had spent only a couple of years in the Senate before beginning his presidential run, they reminded change-thirsty voters that Obama couldn’t possibly be part of that hated Washington establishment. It was as if Chrysler were running an ad campaign emphasizing that its products are nothing like those notorious Toyotas. It’s easier to succeed when your opponent spends a good part of his time helping you make your case.

As for Candidate McCain, he presented himself as an experienced senator and longtime maverick who was right about the surge strategy in Iraq. To most Republican partisans, that message was convincing. But to swing voters, the simple part of the message wasn’t relevant — they wanted a fresh face with new ideas and a taste for unity, not an experienced hand with a talent for trouble. And the relevant part of McCain’s message wasn’t simple — maybe he was right about the surge, but voters still had reservations about the war and weren’t sure how much to weigh foreign-policy experience against other leadership qualities in the midst of an economic downturn.

Late in the campaign, and almost by accident, McCain’s economic message found simplicity and relevance in the person of Joe the Plumber. By then, though, the parameters of the race had pretty much been set. Indeed, many Americans had already cast their votes by the time the issue was fully developed and a last-minute batch of “Joe the Plumber” ads made it to the airwaves.

Again, I don’t deny that Republicans should reengineer their campaign machinery from top to bottom, or that the conservative movement should enter a period of introspection and renewal. With regard to the latter, I believe that only a coherent, easy-to-explain combination of tax relief and government reforms that draw on the movement’s libertarian and traditionalist strands — call it a bold fusion of liberty and virtue — has a chance of addressing the concerns of America’s broad middle class and assembling an electoral majority. But some perspective is called for here. Any political scientist using standard predictive models would have forecast a Democratic victory months ago, long before the general election was under way. Despite it all, McCain attracted 46 percent of the popular vote. And with every electoral cylinder firing for the Dems, their 2008 gains got them back to the status quo ante of 1993, but no further.

Once the Democrats nominated Obama and the Republicans nominated McCain, the basic messages of the 2008 election were set. Besides which, most Americans felt the tug of history. They wanted to find reasons to elect the nation’s first black president, not reasons to reject him. Differences in the campaigns’ marketing acumen (and resources) may have affected Obama’s margin of victory modestly, but the result was not really in doubt. Brand Obama better fit the mood of the times.

The thing about the times is, they change.