Five Ways the Election Will Change Washington

"If we were to win the House," McCarthy added, "that would be different."

President Barack Obama attends the "Moving America Forward" rally held at a local park next to the...

President Barack Obama attends the "Moving America Forward" rally held at a local park next to the Roberts Elementary School, in this Oct. 10, 2010 file photo in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Two years after Obama was swept into office on a message of hope, he faces what may be a historic rebuke from midterm voters, including millions of independents who supported him last time.

(Bennett Raglin/WireImage/Getty Images)

Republicans need a net gain of 39 seats in the House to win control. Most non-partisan analysts, including those at The Cook Political Report and The Rothenberg Political Report, now project they easily will exceed that number. But they say the GOP is straining to gain the 10 seats it would need to have a majority in the Senate.

The White House promises Republicans what Obama counselor David Axelrod calls "a welcoming hand" after the election.

"The message that voters are going to send and the message that we as elected officials should take is that of working together, of getting things done," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.

But he also bashed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for telling National Journal that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Gibbs called that "a deeply disappointing message" — though hardly a surprising one since the two sides have been engaged in rhetorical warfare for months.

The change on Capitol Hill is likely to be more traumatic for Obama than it was for Clinton in 1994, says Pitney, a professor at Claremont McKenna College in California who has worked for the Republican National Committee.

As governor of Arkansas, Clinton was accustomed to dealing with Republican state legislators. The GOP defeated him in his first bid for re-election.

In contrast, Obama represented a solidly Democratic district in the Illinois State Legislature, was elected to the U.S. Senate in a race in which the Republican opposition imploded, led Republican John McCain through most of the 2008 presidential election and moved into the White House with Democrats in control of Congress.

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"This will really be the first time Republicans have ever beaten him in his entire career ... so the question is whether President Obama will be able to find his own path as fast as Bill Clinton found his," Pitney says. Clinton recovered from crushing setbacks in 1994 to win a second term two years later.

If Democratic losses next Tuesday are as big as expected, Obama will have to decide how to respond as he prepares for his re-election campaign in 2012. He could follow the strategy devised by Clinton — who compromised with Republicans to overhaul welfare and balance the federal budget — or adopt a more confrontational style that paints the GOP as extreme.

There is sure to be a pitched battle on one familiar issue. Many Republicans have campaigned on a vow to repeal the new health care law, which Obama claims as a signature achievement of his first two years in office.

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The president isn't the only one facing post-election adjustments.

Establishment Republicans will have to accommodate uncompromising newcomers. Some Tea Party champions — including Senate candidates Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Mike Lee in Utah — won nominations by vanquishing candidates backed by the GOP leadership. All three now lead in statewide polls.

"You've got a GOP civil war," predicts Nathan Daschle, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.

Republican leaders already are trying to cultivate relations and, in some cases, make amends. "I've been to my share of Tea Party events," Boehner told reporters at a breakfast in July. His leadership political action committee has distributed more than $300,000 to Tea Party hopefuls.

But the candidates who rose with support from the Tea Party movement have campaigned on a promise to end politics as usual — that is, the sort of give-and-take usually needed to pass legislation.

And on some issues, the Republican establishment and the Tea Party reinforcements seem destined to clash.