The Democrats are responding to their latest defeat by recognizing that they failed under Obama to focus on voters’ core concern: the declining standard of living of the middle class. Caitlin Huey-Burns reports in Real Clear Politics:

When the main concern among voters, according to exit polls, was the economy, top Democratic campaigns were focused on abortion, contraception, and running from the president. Despite signs of economic improvement, voters all over the country weren’t feeling it personally. Democrats failed to adequately respond to that anxiety, and ultimately failed to win votes.
“We saw elections where strong pro-choice women went to the polls and elected vehemently anti-choice Republicans because we are in this historic period of middle-class economic insecurity, where people’s paychecks are paramount in their decisions,” said Rep. Steve Israel of New York, who ran House Democrats’ campaign arm.
Israel is now chairing the conference’s policy and communications shop, created in the wake of the 2014 elections. (Schumer runs the Senate’s equivalent.) Israel said he is in the process of interviewing members about solutions and messaging, and will meet with Schumer to exchange ideas this week. The caucus is focused on paychecks, Social Security, and campaign finance reform as major policy areas.
“Democrats could also try to change the conversation by saying not only do we need to focus on the issues that matter, we also need to focus on the metrics,” said William Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former policy adviser to President Clinton. “Why aren’t we talking about the incomes of middle-class families every quarter? … People understand that average families still haven’t recovered to where they were [before] the Great Recession.”
Agenda items like minimum wage, pay equity, income inequality and other parts of the so-called “fairness” agenda are good and valuable causes, Democrats say, but they don’t directly address the top concern that people have about their lives, and the lives of their children, getting better.