ROOTS OF FAILURE - AT 9:51 A.M. ET:  As Johnny Carson used to say, "You know you're in trouble when..."

A president knows he's in trouble when analysts accept as a premise that he's in trouble, and move on to try to find the origin of the problem.  It's kind of an advance political autopsy.  The Politico is doing the cutting:

Barack Obama’s Big Bang is beginning to backfire, as his plans for rapid, once-in-a-generation overhauls of energy, financial regulation and health care are running into stiff resistance, both in Washington and around the country.

The Obama theory was simple, though always freighted with risk: Use a season of economic anxiety to enact sweeping changes the public likely wouldn’t stomach in ordinary times. But the abrupt swing in the public’s mood, from optimism about Obama’s possibility to concern he may overreaching, has thrown the White House off its strategy and forced the president to curtail his ambitions.

Some Democrats point to a decision in June as the first vivid sign of trouble for Obama. These Democrats say the White House, in retrospect, made a grievous mistake by muscling conservative Democrats in swing districts vote for a cap-and-trade energy bill that was very unpopular among their constituents.

Those moderate Dems are paying for that vote, and they're not feeling warm toward those liberal Dems who pressured them.

“The majority-makers are the freshman and sophomores from conservative districts where there’s this narrative building about giveaways, buyouts and too much change at once,” said a top House Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity to discuss internal politics candidly. “There’s this big snowball building in those districts. That’s why those folks are so scared."

Ah, a snowball in this time of "global warming."  Don't you just love it?

And what is the liberal response?  They're claiming Obama isn't liberal enough. You know, you go to bed with liberals, you wake up with socialists.

August 22, 2009