Freedom Line Blog

Read between the lines and you’ll see that that’s the message democratic strategists are pushing on President Obama’s reelection team. Here’s how The Daily Caller‘s Stephen Elliot reports the advice being given by Democracy Corps’ James Carville and Stan Greenberg:

The current campaign is focused on success in the economic recovery, but Carville’s group says the strategy is “wrong” and “will fail.” The only reason Obama is keeping up in the campaign is because voters perceive Romney as “out of touch with ordinary people.”

The authors recommend that Obama show more empathy for the struggles of the middle class. “These voters want to know that he understands the struggle of working families and has plans to make things better,” according to the report.

… “These voters are not convinced that we are headed in the right direction…and the current narrative about progress just misses the opportunity to connect and point forward,” continues the report.

In tests done as part of the focus groups, Obama campaign ads that highlight job growth and economic recovery during the last four years did not even win over voters who already supported Obama.

That last line is telling: if even Obama’s most fervent admirers aren’t buying his pitch on the economy, just imagine how turned off all-important swing voters will be in the fall. Are we really to believe that they’ll be brought back to the fold just because Obama all of a sudden becomes “empathetic,”acting as if he stays up nights worried about people who’ve been forced to start buying generic brand breakfast cereals?

Let me register a radical sentiment: I give no more of a damn about whether the president sympathizes with my economic plight than I do whether my plumber is moved by the hardship I have to endure when there’s not enough hot water. In both cases, the sentiment is the same: fix the problem and then leave me well enough alone. My suspicion is that the rest of the country is increasingly feeling the same way. We’ll see in November.

Maybe Wisconsin Democrats need Ragin’ Cajun Jim Carville to explain the concept that elections have consequences.  It wouldn’t be the first time Carville unleashed on members of his own party.

But perhaps Ed Morrissey will do as a substitute with his cool reasoning about the proper way to handle a campaign defeat:

If Republicans overreached with their budget-repair bill and unfairly restricted the rights of unions, then let Democrats go on record opposing the bill and make it the centerpiece of the next legislative election in Wisconsin. Under the circumstances, though, the Democrats who have tried to hijack democracy in order to dictate terms should be the ones who fear the next election the most.

The longer Wisconsin Senate Democrats delay action on legislative business, the more authority they lose to negotiate on any other issue this session.  They also shouldn’t forget the lesson they’re teaching majority Republicans whenever they do return: lock the doors and monitor the whereabouts of every quorum-busting Democrat to make sure they don’t pull this stunt again.

Is that really the precedent Wisconsin Democrats want to establish?

That’s the point made by Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal.

I would argue that the Reform wave building in the land is not antigovernment, but pro-government. When people call themselves Americans, Californians, New Yorkers, Illinoisans, Texans or, yes, New Jerseyans, they aren’t just talking about a place name, but a fought-for legal entity with a grand political history. Anger at Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Trenton and Washington, D.C., isn’t antigovernment. It’s rightful rage at years of misgovernance.

I think Henninger’s argument is the best description of the anger roiling supporters and critics of the Obama Administration’s handling of the Gulf Oil Spill.  It may very be that there are limited options for “plugging the hole,” but the fact remains that people expect leaders to show they know how to prioritize problems, and work towards a solution.  Even James Carville is apoplectic at Obama’s seeming inability to do either during this crisis.

For the president who promised competence, we’re getting an awful lot of failing grades in Leadership 101.

That appears to be James Carville’s new strategy amidst the Democratic bloodbath last week.  Writing in the Financial Times, Carville argues that Democrats need to end their circular firing squad and start blaming the real culprit behind recent failings … George W. Bush, of course.

President Obama has had more than a year to “fix” the nation, but his attempts at restoring economic growth were littered with the tired and failed ideas of yet another government stimulus plan.  His spending schemes and continued bailouts have only exacerbated the unemployment rate, while still spending more than any president in history, including George W. Bush.

What George W. Bush has to do with an election in the most liberal state in the nation is unexplained by Mr. Carville’s article.  President Bush’s economic policies did contribute to the deficit and to the unemployment rate but they didn’t make Martha Coakley take a vacation during her campaign or make President Obama ignore the race until it was too late.

For Mr. Carville, President Bush is a convenient boogeyman, but not an explanation for electoral disaster in the Bay State.