Tuesday night was a disaster for Democrats nationally. Period.

Losing the Virginia governor's race in a state that President Joe Biden had won by 10 percentage points just a year earlier was bad enough. But the surprising closeness of the New Jersey governor's race -- coupled with the rejection of a ballot measure to replace the police department in Minneapolis -- suggests that there is broad dissatisfaction in the country for how Democrats have handled the power given to them in 2020.

Below are five reasons why now is the time that Democrats need to start panicking about the coming 2022 midterms.

1. Donald Trump isn't the bogeyman he once was. During the entirety of Trump's presidency, Democrats had a simple formula to rev up their base: Remind people of who was in the White House. Trump was so repellent to Democratic voters -- and to many swing voters as well -- that any candidate running with an "R" after their name was in danger of being sunk by the mere mention that they occupied the same party as the President. The results Tuesday night suggest that Trump no longer evokes that same passionate reaction. Which isn't to say he is well liked. He isn't. Just 42% of Virginia voters said they had a favorable view of the former president while 54% had an unfavorable one. (For what it's worth, Biden's numbers were similar; 45% approved of the job he is doing while 54% disapproved.) But disliking Trump wasn't the voting issue on Tuesday that it had been in years past. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe spent the entirety of the Virginia campaign trying to tie Republican Glenn Youngkin to Trump. But with Trump out of office -- and with his profile significantly lowered due to his being banned on Twitter and Facebook -- that argument didn't have salience. Hatred for Trump didn't drive the Democratic base to the polls as it had in 2020. And for swing voters, they weren't convinced that electing Youngkin -- a business guy who made a name for himself on the campaign trail by wearing fleece vests -- was a Trump clone.