If Obama were to extend his expression of audacity from hope to ad nauseam repetitious reminders that it was the Republicans who ruined, and are continuing to ruin, the economy, and demand the same from all Democratic leaders, people might eventually tire of it and think to themselves, "alright already, we know the Republicans caused this recession which lost us millions of jobs, and are doing everything they can to stop us from fixing their mess," but what would stick in voters' minds on November 2nd, 2010 would not be our Democratic leaders' obnoxiously  persistent reminders, but rather those infinitely more egregious and costly Republican crimes against their retirement accounts.

We need to be audacious enough to offend Americans with the truth of Republican economic failure repeated far too often to be ignored, and have faith that these Americans will take out their anger on the culpable Republicans who even now audaciously continue to champion the policies that collapsed our economy.

The strategy would not be limited to complaining.  Obama must also, and will, create the millions of jobs we need.  Your comment about people not wanting to hear about the "mess we inherited" is similar to what most people polled say about negative campaigning  -  They don't like it.  However, negative campaigning works wonderfully, and over the last few election cycles it has not discouraged voter turnout as many people predicted.  Voters may not like blaming, but they react very well to it at voting booths.

People may not want to hear, and re-hear, and re-hear all about how it was the Republican Party and its insidious economic ideology that ruined our economy, but people need to hear that fundamental truth.  To the extent that Democrats do not push that meme like a mantra, too many voters will buy the Republican Party's same old economic snake oil, rebranded and packaged as a new product.

Obama's programs ARE working beyond expectations, especially on the the GDP.  Everyone knows that lobs are a lagging indicator, and that is next up on his agenda.

Pretty much every economist understood in January that with the stimulus, we'd be exactly where we are today: no longer under threat of a meltdown, but with 10%+ unemployment on the horizon for some time.

The problem is that wasn't the message then that Obama and his team gave. I understand that they didn't want to come into office and say "things are really bad and are going to be really bad for 2 years and we're going to do things to make them less bad but given 8 -- or 20 -- years of neglect, we're not going to be able to fix things for 2-4 years." But that was the reality of the situation, and we can't pretend otherwise; nor should we let Republican's control the debate by claiming that Obama's policies have failed when, in fact, they've done what was expected.

Voters don't like whining. But they do like honesty.

Howard Dean would have destroyed the Republican Party over what they did to the economy.  Obama should thank his progressive base by re-instating Dean.  Either that or get him to teach Kaine how to do his job.

the President is the defacto head of the party. HE becomes the party spokesman. When there is a President in office from your party, the chair of your party becomes rather invisible.

Do you remember Jim Gilmore, Marc Racicot, Ed Gillespe, Mike Duncan or Mel Martinez out there all the time? Not as much as you see Steele or you saw Richard Bond, Haley Barbour and Jim Nicholson in the 90's.

Same with the DNC...David Wilhem, Debra DeLee, Don Fowler, Steve Grossman, Joe Andrew...do these names ring a bell? Andrew does because of the Gore campaign, but the others will missing during the 90's because Bill Clinton was in office.

Our economy has grown more, with more job creation, under Democrats than under Republicans going back to the Kennedy Administration.  

If this comes as news to many of us, it's because our Democratic leaders are too often too foolishly modest and pacifist to keep reminding voters of just how good we are at governing when compared with the Republicans.

So, fixing the economy is good, but it is not nearly enough.  We need to conduct these next several years as if were were in the midst of an election campaign, because the way politics have become, we are.  We need to go negative  relentlessly to get our message of Republican incompetence across.

Yes, next year will be about jobs, and I pity the hapless Republicans who think they will get away with opposing Obama on either his programs or how he intends to pay for them.

The only meme anyone needs to be persistently reminded of is the one that everyone but the lunatic Right already agrees with; that the Republican Party caused last year's global recession and its massive jobs losses through their Conservative economic policies and programs.

I agree with you that we need to be patient as Obama does what we personally would like.  Averting a depression was necessary and overhauling health care was as progressive a start as anyone could wish.  

What we should always keep in mind is that beginning in 2006, we won back power because we began to attack the Republicans ruthlessly.  Being holier than thou is good only as political theatre.  The electorate trusts us only to the extent that we are willing and able to fight ferociously for them.  Democrats could try their hardest to attack too much, and it would probably take them years to succeed with that aim.  When it's about defeating the Republicans Party, its better to err on the side of battle.

I agree that the generalized message is far more important than the details, but I think that blame is the central component for a successful message.  

We can't count on voters to connect the dots.  They have to be told and re-told who was responsible for the meltdown, so that when the Republicans dust off and re-present their now dead economic ideology, voters will say "been there, done that, and we're not doing it again."

If the Democrats endlessly repeat the fact Michael Moore brought in Capitalism, that the top one percent now own more wealth than the bottom ninety percent, Democrats will have a ready answer for every time Republicans ask "how are we going to pay for it?"  Tax the rich until they give it all back.