Over the past six years, we’ve seen an unusual series of see-saw elections. In 2008, Barack Obama was elected president and the Democrats expanded their majorities in Congress. In 2010, Republicans took back the House and nearly took the Senate.

In 2012, Obama was re-elected, and Democrats gained seats in the House and Senate. In 2014, as we’ve just seen, Republicans took back the Senate.

Does this teeter-totter illustrate our discontent with government? The failure of the two parties to frame a meaningful agenda? Our uncertainty of where we are going as a nation, despite our continuing world leadership?

It may be all of these things, but it also reflects Republicans’ abandonment of a clear agenda, instead adopting opposition and obstruction as their sole response to a Democratic president. Republicans once could be relied on to campaign for a robust national defense, a balanced budget, and a court system that deferred to Congress.

It’s been a long time since we heard any of these themes raised by GOP candidates.

It’s been Democrats who have attempted to employ government to confront major national issues.

The Democratic primary campaign of 2008 featured an important debate over universal health care between Obama and Hilary Clinton. In office, Obama faced an enormous financial crisis that derailed much of his domestic agenda, but he pushed ahead with health care and signed the Affordable Care Act into law.

Without question, the ACA represents the largest shift in national priorities in a generation. After 65 years of struggle, the nation finally had a path to health care for every citizen. It passed, unfortunately, without a single Republican vote, but included many elements featured in previous Republican health care plans, back when they had such plans.

Then something strange happened. As soon as Democrats passed this historic legislation, they began avoiding the subject entirely.

The 2010 campaign was dominated by GOP predictions that the ACA would break the budget, disrupt private insurance, create red ink for state Medicaid programs, and send insurance premiums spiraling upward.

None of these things came to pass.

When the ACA insurance exchange website opened in late 2013, it staggered. The “disastrous” rollout, however, was succeeded by a quick recovery. More than eight million people signed up, a million more than what were thought to be optimistic predictions. Premiums rose modestly for the exchanges’ second year – in Maine, they actually decreased.

By the fall, Republicans had dropped the ACA as a campaign issue, since it was clear that the law, despite their best efforts, was working. Yet the Democrats who’d staked their political lives on this decision were also silent.

One survey found that, of the relatively few campaign ads that featured health care, barely 15% even mentioned the ACA.

Despite a largely successful launch of the largest new national program in decades, no one, including the president, seemed to want to take credit.

Imagine, for a moment, if Democrats had based their campaigns on providing health care to everyone, in a program that’s fully paid for and has had none of the dire consequences opponents predicted.

In Maine, everyone was told that Gov. Paul LePage had vetoed five different bills to expand the MaineCare program that is the vital counterpart to the private insurance offered on the exchanges.

But this tactic framed the issue a tug-of-war between Democrats and Republicans, not as a health and economic issue.

What if we’d seen ads that talked about the 70,000 Mainers who were promised health care by the ACA, but denied it by state government? What if hospital workers were seen talking about the cutbacks in staff and services they’ll see because of the missing $350 million in annual federal funding?

What if we saw ordinary Mainers who went to the doctor for the first time without fearing the financial consequences?

We can’t say for sure if the results would have been different, but it would have been an effective answer to those who instead argue that Maine’s future rides on whether we’re adequately policing welfare payments.

The same tidal shift that produced the 2014 results will return in 2016. In the U.S. Senate, 23 Republican seats are up, reversing the problem Democrats had this year. Democrats have a presidential nominee-in-waiting, while Republicans will spend months searching for a plausible candidate.

Will we ever get out of this rut that’s prevented action for decades on national priorities that range from immigration to global warming, from Social Security to energy and infrastructure?

Only if we start focusing on what we want government to do, and how we want it to get there.

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Douglas Rooks is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 29 years. He can be reached at [email protected].