Disconnected?

My goodness. When John Judis of The New Republic arrives at much the same conclusion as Peggy Noonan, something’s certainly going on:

Obama’s political problem boils down to the difficulty he has speaking to and for middle America. This problem became evident during the middle of the primary battle with Hillary Clinton. And it could have seriously damaged his candidacy against John McCain. But the onset of the financial crisis that fall, and McCain’s feeble response to it, along with his choice of Sarah Palin as vice president, highlighted Obama’s strongest asset in the eyes of voters–his intelligence–and reduced the importance of his lack of a common touch.

As president, however, Obama’s lack of engagement with middle America has come to the surface and has contributed to his decline in popularity. This shortcoming has been evident in his style and choice of venues–he gave his endorsement of Coakley on Sunday at Northeastern University, in Boston, rather than at a union hall or public auditorium in Worcester or Springfield. It is also evident in his choice of advisors and spokespeople and in the way he has framed his programs.

while Clintonista Lanny Davis takes a somewhat different angle on things:

Bottom line: We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions.

That’s what Massachusetts Democrats and independent voters were telling national Democrats yesterday. The question isn’t just, will we listen? The question is, will we stop listening to the strident, purist base of our party who seem to prefer defeat to winning elections and no change at all if they don’t get all the change they want.

You don’t have to look far to see what the “strident, purist base” is advocating: more partisanship, doubling down on the move to the left that the Democratic Congressional leadership has been following. The very first comment on Judis’s article is a good example:

On the other hand, perhaps a Democratic Party that actually stood for something and was prepared to lead with vision rather than cower before the GOP might be useful too.

I think that a critical question is would President Obama have been elected in the first place if he had run on what he has done? Not what he has said but what he has done? I.e. a technocratic, industrial policy approach to the economy that rewarded the same people who put us in the fix we’re in in the first place (and which followed the steps taken by the Bush Administration in its waning days) and a foreign policy that, other than in rhetoric, was very similar to the Bush foreign policy as well? Letting the Congress have its head?

If you run on hope and change, that’s what you should deliver. To that effect the entire Obama Administration needs to affect a more positive and upbeat attitude. Stop blaming the Bush Administration. However it may have been responsible for the present state of affairs, it’s not in office any more. You are. Make the issues that most people are interested in the issues that you at the very least appear to be devoting the most attention to.

Fewer dry technocrats. Fewer partisan firebrands.