"Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010..." from 12/09:

[elocs]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/leadership-obama-style-an_b_398813.html

"Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator"

As the president's job performance numbers and ratings on his handling of virtually every domestic issue have fallen below 50 percent, the Democratic base has become demoralized, and Independents have gone from his source of strength to his Achilles Heel, it's time to reflect on why. The conventional wisdom from the White House is those "pesky leftists" -- those bloggers and Vermont Governors and Senators who keep wanting real health reform, real financial reform, immigration reform not preceded by a year or two of raids that leave children without parents, and all the other changes we were supposed to believe in.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

In the more than year and a half since this article, how have things changed concerning Obama's base and their feelings of disappointment and betrayal? Not much I would guess.

[Bonhomme Richard]

1. I think what annoys me the most is that they haven't......

changed their tactics one wit.
I mean, for Gods sake, how many times do you need sand kicked in your face to get angry? I thoroughly understand political realities and if I felt like he was trying that would be different. It makes me wonder what he really wants and that isn't a good place for me to be.

[elocs]

2. It's interesting to see an article written 20 months ago that called the 2010 elections

and still applies to this day. We are fortunate that the Republicans do not have a candidate, at least at this time, who could possibly beat Obama.