The Enthusiasm Gap

I had dinner the other night with a Democratic pollster who told me Democrats are heading toward next fall’s mid-term elections with a serious enthusiasm gap: The Republican base is fired up. The Democratic base is packing up.

The Democratic base is lethargic because congressional Democrats continue to compromise on everything the base cares about. For a year now it’s been nothing but compromises, watered-down ideas, weakened provisions, wider loopholes, softened regulations. Health care went from what the Democratic base wanted — single payer — to a public option, to no public option, to a bunch of ideas that the president tried to explain last week, and it now hangs by a string as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid try to round up conservative Democrats and a 51-vote reconciliation package in the Senate.

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