That Was Quick

Doug Schoen has a piece where he tells the Democrats how they can save their bacon in November. Since the anticipated "bump" from the passage of Health Care Reform (or is it Health Insurance Reform?) never materialized, Democrats have to be standing around wondering what happened.  Especially after they felt so confident, they were predicting 40 years of Democrat dominance.
So, what actually did happen?  I will propose a few suggestions, confident that Democrats will never actually consider them, since they seem to lack the intellectual ability to examine an issue dispassionately.
First, Democrats, especially liberals (read Left, since some people who claim to be liberal are anything but) are really a minority.  They are outnumbered two to one by self proclaimed conservatives.The Democrats were also very successful in painting Republicans with a very negative brush, resulting in Conrand Burns losing his seat to Tester as an example.  The problem here is that the Democrats are not more honorable or moral than the Republicans.  Remember Nancy Pelosi was going to drain the swamp, except of course for Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Morin, and so many others.  In fact, the Democrat leadership has done yeoman's work in protecting these people rather than rooting out corruption.
Next, in 2008 the Democrats ran on the platform that they weren't Bush, just like in 1976, when they ran as not being Nixon.  You can run against someone only so far,  As it is now, the electorate is about evenly split between Obama and Bush as to who they would prefer.  Also in 2008, Obama ran on the solid platform of "Hope and Change."  It wasn't really his fault, but he did exploit the ambiguity of the mantra because everyone could project just what they thought they wanted onto Obama.  The downside is that Obama could never meet their expectations after he was elected.  Although the evidence seems to be that he never intended to do anything but to repay his Democrat allies in the auto industry and financial industry.
Then, believing their own propaganda, (I am wondering if Bill Clinton isn't deliberately trying to sabotage Obama by declaring an improvement in public opinion after the bills passage) led them to ram through a massive social program that the public was opposed to.  Nancy Pelosi claimed that all would be better when the public got to see the bill, but just the opposite happened.  A good part of their problem is that to even pretend it's fiscally solvent, they had to defer benefits for three years.  And in the process, because they rushed the bill through, in spite of all of these promises, they managed to cut themselves out of any health care until 2013.  The irony alone is delicious, but as a metaphor for being too complex, it is without equal.
Then, just to top it all off, the Tea Party arose, and the Democrats got it completely wrong.  First they claimed it was astro-turf, mostly because they are very familiar with astro-turf counters to anything that Bush did.  Since Soros paid for all of their projects, they assumed that there must be someone on the Republican side who was being the yin to Soros' yang.  Except there isn't anyone.  Next, the Democrats through their state controlled media tried to denigrate the Tea Party by asking where the leaders are, or what is the message.  They fail to grasp that this is a completely self organizing group who are angry with the direction of the country.  Then, the schtick is that the TPers are just ignorant rubes and hicks.  Which was shown to be false by the NYT  But still they persist in trying to denigrate and diminish TPers.  Some do it by falsely accusing them of racism, a most despicable tactic, because it minimizes actual racists.  And once the truth came out that the TPers were actually better educated and older, the new spin is that they are just spoiled elitists. 
I am sure though, that the Democrats are particularly frustrated by the fact that the usual tactics of social control that they have used these many years are not working.  How dare these people publicly disagree with their supposed betters.  Except they do.
Finally, I would offer this bit of solace to the Democrats - if the Republicans fail to act in a fiscally responsible manner, they won't be in officer for very long either.