The electoral map candidate Barack Obama remade in 2008 appears to be retreating into its familiar patterns.

Obama broke the decisive role Ohio and Florida seemed to play in presidential elections, by moving from trench warfare engagement in the two states to a broader battlefield on which Republicans were placed on the defensive in states they'd once taken for granted. And his victories in places where Democrats had fared poorly in recent elections — Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, the interior West — seemed to validate his strategists' claims that he had consigned the red state-blue state presidential dichotomy to the bookstore remainders bin.

But now some of the same unlikely states that Obama put in his party's column 15 months ago feature Senate, House and governor's races with Democratic candidates in grave danger of losing in what is quickly shaping up to be a toxic election cycle.

While off-year and down-ballot elections are inherently different than presidential contests, the rapid reversal in Democratic fortunes in the very places where Obama's success brought so much attention suggests that predictions of a lasting realignment were premature.

And it's raising the question of whether the president's 2008 win was the result of a unique set of circumstances that will be difficult for him to replicate again and perhaps downright impossible for other Democrats on the ballot to reprise.

"They had wind at their back," said former Rep. Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican and a student of national politics, of Obama's historic victory. "People were hungry for change, and the president was running against a 72-year-old guy who couldn't use a computer."

But, Davis added: "One election doesn't make realignment."

At the very least, it seems that Obama's success proved that those conservative-leaning states must be viewed as highly competitive for both parties — a departure from an electoral past in which they were assumed to be GOP locks.

"They were red, but they're competitive now," said Democratic National Committee Chairman and former Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine.

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