Politico's latest fiction: Obama isolated ahead of 2012

[ProSense]

Obama isolated ahead of 2012

By: Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei

President Barack Obama has performed his act of contrition. Now comes the hard part, according to Democrats around the country: reckoning with the simple fact that he’s isolated himself from virtually every group that matters in American politics.

Congressional Democrats consider him distant and blame him for their historic defeat on Tuesday. Democratic state party leaders scoff at what they see as an inattentive and hapless political operation. Democratic lobbyists feel maligned by his holier-than-though take on their profession. His own cabinet – with only a few exceptions – has been marginalized.

His relations with business leaders could hardly be worse. Obama has suggested it’s a PR problem but several Democratic officials said CEOs friendly with the president walk away feeling he’s indifferent at best to their concerns. Add in his icy relations with Republicans, the media and, most importantly, most voters and it’s easy to understand why his own staff leaked word to POLITICO that they want Obama to shake up his staff and change his political approach

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Florida Democratic gubernatorial nominee Alex Sink took it further, hitting a “tone-deaf” Obama White House to explain why she narrowly lost her campaign, saying the administration mishandled the BP oil spill and hasn’t fully grasped the political damage done by Obama’s health care reform push. “They just need to be better listeners and be better at reaching out to people who are on the ground to hear about the realities of their policies as well as politics,” Sink told POLITICO.

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First, they sure have pegged the people who the President should be most concerned with: lobbyists, CEOs, Republicans and the media.

Politico: Time for the President to start appeasing lobbyists, CEOs, Republicans and the media.

As for most voters: They didn't vote. About 29 million Obama voters didn't vote. The voters who did vote, weren't exactly buying what Republicans were selling. You can best be assured that neither do the 29 million non-voters.

Politico wrote a piece on Sink over the weekend. Here is a rebuttal piece: Alex Sink: meet the mirror. You lost because of YOU, and your state party

Poltico quoted Sink: "the administration...doesn’t appreciate the political damage done by healthcare reform"

The rebuttal piece pointed out: "To be sure, exit polls showed that four in 10 Floridians disapprove of healthcare reform."

Four in ten is not a majority, it's high, but not higher than the national numbers.

Exit polls:

On the question of President Barack Obama's job performance, 54 percent said they disapproved, while 45 percent approved. On Obama's signature health care law, a majority want it either expanded (30 percent) or left as it is (19 percent). About 44 percent of voters said it should be repealed.

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Here is Josh Marshall on Politico's current piece:

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I remember in early 2009 numerous conversations to the effect that obviously President Obama would be reelected in 2012. It was barely even worth contesting it. Same on the congressional side. Obviously, two years is a long time. I similarly remember listening to a radio program in 1991 in which a high profile commentator seriously proposed that the Democrats nominate George Bush for president but a Democrat for vice president. It was so obvious that President Bush would be reelected in 1992 that the only real opportunity for the Democrats would be to get someone else in as vice president beside Dan Quayle. The suggestion was half made in jest but only half.

Above all else, DC is a company town. Insular, incestuous, small. The Democrats took a pounding on election day. It's in the nature of the place to suddenly be unable to see anything except through that prism. No one has any idea where we're going to be in two years. Not just whether it's good for which of the two parties but what the complexion of the reality is going to be. That's the only true compass to follow in the coming months.

Good point, but it requires taking Politico's assessment seriously.