Drew Weston joins Ed Schultz to talk about the demoralization of the base and his statement the President made to the Washington Post:
Obama said the public option "has become a source of ideological contention between the left and right." But, he added, "I didn't campaign on the public option."
That's clearly not true as Ed Shows in the video clip. Drew Weston's recent article in the Huffington Post is 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.
Not long ago, Dr Drew Westen was the "it boy" of the Democratic Party, with his book "The Political Brain." I doubt if anyone in the White House likes him much today.
