Leaders of Florida's Democratic and Republican parties are already looking down the road to the 2010 elections and this much is clear: Barack Obama's victory has shaken both sides, for very different reasons.

After 12 years of nearly complete control of state politics, the Republican Party of Florida lost the state to a Democratic presidential candidate and the defeat has unleashed a chorus of complaints that the party has retreated from its core principles and lost its message, and that party chairman Jim Greer has mismanaged funds.

Democrats, jubilant over Obama's win, are questioning why they did so badly in legislative races. Some blame the party leadership and want a change of the guard. Some want to jettison convoluted party rules that serve as barriers to newcomers and others want to re-evaluate how the party manages campaigns.

''The fact that Obama won the state by four percentage points yet Democrats picked up one seat in both houses of the Legislature means that we need to reassess how we're running our races,'' said Sen. Dave Aronberg, a Greenacres Democrat. ``It was a missed opportunity. We need to find out where things went wrong.''

Meanwhile, Republicans are struggling with how to close an ideological rift the likes of which they haven't faced since 1992, when Florida helped Bill Clinton unseat the first George Bush and GOP leaders debated whether to move more to the middle or more to the right.

Last week, Gov. Charlie Crist pushed for moderation and the middle ground. In the closing speech to the Republican Governors Conference in Miami, Crist urged his counterparts ''to end the usual politics and begin forging relationships across the political divide'' and do a better job of including ``Hispanics, African Americans and other minority groups.''

In network interviews throughout the week, Crist repeated his pitch that the key to reclaiming victory in Congress and the White House is to govern as he has with an inclusive ''big tent'' and ''almost nonpartisan'' politics.

But as Crist was offering his antidote, many leaders within his own Florida party -- from financial donors to political consultants and even former Gov. Jeb Bush -- were clamoring for Republicans to adopt a more traditional message, offer a more specific agenda, and even replace Crist's hand-picked party chairman with someone who would put a halt to its wasteful spending.

''I can't tell you how many people I've heard from,'' said Brett Doster, who managed President George W. Bush's successful 2004 campaign in Florida and Tom Gallagher's failed bid for governor in 2006. ``There's a sense out there that we're in retreat.''

Both parties are desperate to fix their troubles because in November 2010, the posts of Crist, U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez and three Cabinet members will be up for election and it will be both parties' last shot at shaping the Legislature before they redraw the state's political districts in the reapportionment of 2012.

Democrats had a surge in party registration this year that left them with 657,000 more registered voters than Republicans, but that didn't translate into victories in down-ballot races, leaving the party still woefully outgunned in the state House and Senate. Now Democrats are worried that new voters will stay home in 2010, absent the star power of a Barack Obama on the ballot.

At the Obama campaign's Election Night victory party, state Democratic Party Chairman Karen Thurman appealed to volunteers: ''Don't drop out,'' she said.

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