It's premature to draw long-term conclusions from off-year elections held in a couple of Eastern Seaboard states.

But surely President Barack Obama and those in his political army aren't smiling this morning over the results of the gubernatorial elections Tuesday in Virginia and New Jersey.

In Virginia, Republicans won not only the governorship in a landslide, but the separate contests for lieutenant governor and attorney general as well. There were plenty of issues dividing the candidates, but a CNN exit poll indicated voters were evenly divided regarding the Democratic president's performance to date.

The CNN poll of New Jersey voters showed Obama with 58 percent support, but that was not enough to put incumbent Democrat Jon Corzine, for whom the president campaigned several times, over the top. While Obama remained popular in a heavily Democratic state, he didn't have any coattails.

And in New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, an independent running on the Republican line, handed Big Apple Democrats their fifth straight defeat.

On the other hand, Democrat Bill Owens won the special election in New York's 23rd Congressional District — a race that was closely watched after liberal Republican Deirdre Scozzafaza dropped out last weekend and immediately endorsed Owens over Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

So Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele may have overstated things when he declared that Tuesday's result, "sends a clear signal that voters have had enough of the president's liberal agenda." But they ought to serve as a cautionary note to the president and his fellow Democrats, both about the danger of abandoning bipartisanship and about overreaching in pursuit of instant victory on issues like health reform and cap-and-trade.

The country as a whole still supports the president, but it also has serious reservations about government taking over functions traditionally performed by the private sector, and the trillions being expended on bailouts, economic stimuli, entitlement programs and a possible expansion of the war in Afghanistan. If the president fails to heed Tuesday's electoral message, the results could be worse for his party in 2010.