what do liberals expect? It is not that Obama and the White House have not tried to break through ao get their message out. There is only so much they can do. I have seen a lot of criticism of the WH messaging but very few suggestions for change. President Obama is working against a media that is wired for right wing control. When Obama does craft an effective message there is no follow through by the back up players in Congress. Obama has held two prime time addresses that focus on health care, yet he is accused of not leading. When the president steps up and sets deadlines for the House to pass the Senate bill, immediately Hoyer and others say they are not in a rush. Obama's team is not perfect but I think they are doing a good job overall.

It was only in the last Administration that the Republican Party switched over from cynically manipulating the crazies to really being owned by them.  Even now, there's still a recognizable gap between the Republicans and the Tea Party.  In the absence of the current economic disaster, the way the Republicans are behaving now would totally alienate the bipartisan-fetishist center, ruining them electorally; but everyone in the Administration has a job so the economic downturn is a thing on paper, a factor perhaps in polling but not in everyday reality, and therefore it's not surprising that they don't grasp that the Republicans don't need to act civilized people. 

Which is not to say that I think the Republicans could ever act civilized, but I knew Obama thought they could when I voted for him.

I think the problem here (in this post) is interpretation; it's the sort of "glass half full", rosy scenario view of Obama that's plagued a lot of left-side thinking since early 2008. I think many of us want Obama to succeed (i certainly do), sometimes so much that we can't see, clearly the flaws that have been in play all along: that Obama and his team are really very new and somewhat naive at what they're doing, and that, in a number of ways, they're not doing things very well.

It should be more troubling, I think, than Charles expresses, that the "people who can deliver bad news" to Obama are so few and amount, basically to Axelrod and Gibbs, two people who don't seem to entirely comprehend what's not working or why. The "bafflement" and blame the media (as well as the right wing noise machine) also strikes me as quite myopic - there's a slew of dissatisfaction on the left that's entirely not about "socialism," "big government," etc... but about a failure within the Administration to move, bravely, on some of the biggest issues we face with the economy, balancing national security with a better approach to anti-terror efforts, or especially healthcare reform. To think that their problem is a sales job that's failed because of the right... is to really miss a lot of the point, right now.

I think more Democrats should be more concerned about the narrowness and insularity of Obama's circle, a concern many of us (how else can I put it.... from our Hillary-iish perspectives) that has been expressed time and again: there is too much similarity of worldview and mindset within his small circle, too little tension, confrontation and disagreement. No wonder they feel blind-sided: they wonder why everyone can't see, well, what they see.

Finally, I think, all of this, while also of a piece with a number of other critiques that have come out lately (including, I think those Emanuel pieces), it's also a good indicator of why the relations between the White House and Congress are so problematic: they aren't adversarial enough with their own Democratic leadership, not particularly interested in Congressional views that diverge from their own... and unwilling to take on the elements of change that are hardest and most desperately needed, including up-ending a cozy, self-satisfied sense within the Democratic Party that nothing, really, is wrong with senior management. What's wrong is... everybody else. That's a bad place for any company's executives to be... and I'd argue that the piece is more revealing than they realize, in that it it doesn't just show why things have been going so wrong... but why it's unlikely that we'll see much improvement anytime soon.

Because the perception by the public is, same old politics. They see the Government spending a trillion dollars here and there and see no positive outcome. They see the deficit exploding, while congress continues to call for more spending. They see their budgets at home underwater and being forced to cut out everything they can to pay their bills, while congress calls for more spending and taxes. They see people like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi dictates what is best for us, when they clearly see that neither has any clue as to what being a middle class workign american is like. They see the President talk abotu healthcare reform, but he never ever took the lead on it. He allowed the crooks in congress to figure it out. The President campaigned on changed and has given them business as usual. Its why the people and the press are slowly turning against him.

and -- that's a significant, if minority, current wthin Obama's coalition -- make a distinction between issues on which political compromise is necessary and issues where we think there is a principle is involved and you have to be willing to go down fighting if you can't win. On rule of law, civil liberties and concessions to theocrats like Stupak, the administration crosses the line for some of us. When they are doing as much harm as good, they lose access to our active support.

Different segments of the Democratic coalition have different bottom lines -- but to govern you have to show some awareness (not deference but awareness) of pretty much all of them. The administration players seem not have any real analysis of why they won -- how they became the focus of a dizzying array of discontents that they didn't have to manage in a campaign context, but which they do have to manage now if they want to get anything done. Forget the Republicans -- those isolated guys in the White House are getting to where they have no friends. That really does point to Jimmy Carter territory -- another good man and bad President.

The administration is tone deaf about their various coalition members' baseline principles, appearing to tromp over them without knowing that they are doing real damage. They could at least mitigate the damage if they had a better sense of the political configuration they depend on. Probably the only set they can count on never to desert are the majority of African-Americans (though they can't count on them to turn out.). But they can alienate just about every other potential friend one way or another. And you can't govern with no friends.

Some things to consider:

1.  Obama is really a conciliator, not a strong leader, and he doesn't have the congressional leadership to help him out.  That being said, there has been a major fail on messaging from day one.

2.  It's really really hard to change a right-leaning nation.  The bottom line is that the US is the most conservative (outside perhaps Switzerland) of developed nations.

3.  I think everyone underestimated how united and disciplined the GOP would be after Obama's election.

4.  A smaller more incremental approach to a progressive agenda may not get a lot of results, but it would be a lot easier to keep the GOP on the agenda.

I just don't think the American people are ready for a massive agenda, however necessary.

The very first thing that Obama did after winning the election was to fire all the paid organizers that had helped him win. He acted like the best way to govern was to negotiate with all the special interests and elite powers in Washington. But the last year shows just how stupid this strategy is. Obama's strength came from grassroots organizing. He should have relied on the grassroots for power to challenge the elite, not negotiated with the elite to disempower the grassroots. Instead, he has cozied up to the special interests and elite powerbrokers and ignored his progressive base. And the fact that Axelrod doesn't understand this is very scary.

Republicans speak in bumber stickers while Democrats believe they can break through with nuance and policy speak. Look at the data that shows that when given each individual aspect of HRC folks like agree with it.

Axelrod really should have known this, it's unforgivable.  He IS the Media Consultant, for God's sake!  I believe he was really taken by surprise at the entrenched rightward and GOP slant of the Media.  I think he STILL believes there's a Lib'rul Media out there.

After the Rev. Wright debacle, where Obama's poll numbers went down so fast he was forced to go to Philly for the memorable "My-Grandmother-is-White" speech, Axelrod should have known that the Villagers like Broder, Quinn, Marcus, Dowd, Will, Timmeh, Dave, Tweety, and their ilk would NEVER counter the HateRadio-FOX smear machine, but would instead gleefully give the smears column space and airtime without any caveats or corrections, and thus help build and maintain the GOP narrative.

Ithappens every week:  The GOP pushes out a smear, and they discuss it like it was true. Last week, it was Eric Holder and the Al-Qaeda 7 until even the Village realized the RIght had gone too far.  This week, it's how Charlie Rangel and Patterson and Massa have sunk the Democratic Party.

Today, that same machine has successfully udermined everything the White House has tried to do. It has forced the White House to throw good people like Van Jones and Anita Dunn under the bus, it has forced the President to combat stupid brushfires like the Death Panels and the Socialist meme, it has  forced the White House to spend a lot of Political Capital on nonsense and left it bereft of its megaphone.

WE HAVE NO MEGAPHONE.

That is the problem.  NO MEGAPHONE.

Not Axe, not Obama, not Geithner, not Rahm.

WE HAVE NO MEGAPHONE.

The GOP has succeeded in slapping it out of the President's hand for all intents and serious purposes.  When the GOP was tricked into giving the President a share of its Megaphone in Baltimore, when the GOP counted on the teleprompter nonsense to further damage the President, it got the surprise of its life.  We got back the Megaphone, broefly, and the whole dynamic and narrative changed.

How do we win back the attention and respect of the American people, when the NY Times, the WaPo, Network News and every other major media avenue has been corrupted by the Right and is busy undermining everything we stand for?

I suggest the Internet and sites like Josh Marshall's, Markos Moulitsas' Crooks-n-Liars, ThinkProgress, and others like this one have been the main reason we won the Election in 2008, they are all we have to push OUR Narrative, and we better fight like rabid Wolverines to dominate this medium, and keep using these as our only Megaphone.

Already, FOXNation, HotAir, and POLITICO have been making inroads into our last media stronghold, and if I were Axe, I would immediately fund amply and appoint my strongest leadership to shoring this stronghold up, expanding it, and winning back the BIG Megaphone.  Or we lose, maybe forever.

All the arguments above about how Obama's policies may or may not be Liberal or Progressive enough remind me of sheep milling around arguing about which is the right entrance to use into the pen, when the wolves have already begun to close the circle, and will soon close in and bar the door.

I know the blogosphere likes to blame Rahm for everything but, the fact is, Axelrod is in charge of messaging and he's been abysmal.