"That spread is the Democrats’ dread “enthusiasm gap.” And since that gap can’t be bridged in two months by new government programs or divine intervention for the nearly one in six Americans who are un- or underemployed, what could give the Democrats even a slender reed of hope? If there’s any plausible answer, it can be drawn from the single poll finding that is most devastating for Obama, the question (as worded by The Washington Post/ABC News) of whether “he understands the problems of people like you.” There his numbers really have imploded. When he arrived in office, 72 percent answered Yes and 24 percent No. As of last week, Yes had fallen to 50 and No had doubled to 48.

"That a former community organizer and insurgent presidential candidate from a rocky middle-class background could be branded an out-of-touch elitist is not entirely the fault of his critics. Obama has perhaps never recovered from handing his administration’s plum economic jobs to Robert Rubin protégés with dirty hands from the bubble — Lawrence Summers, a deregulation advocate from the Clinton administration, and Timothy Geithner, an indulgent regulator at the New York Fed. Their presence has helped Obama’s more unscrupulous adversaries get away with the lie that his White House, not President Bush’s, created TARP. Indeed, such is the Obama administration’s identification with the tarnished Wall Street culture that even Michael Bloomberg mistakenly identified Geithner, a longtime public servant who never worked at an investment bank, as a Goldman Sachs alumnus at a public event in New York last month."  (Frank Rich at the New York Times)

or this:

"Obama’s guiding principle since taking office is that of his Republican predecessors: It’s Wall Street that makes America rich. In this mythology it’s the wealthiest brackets that employ labor, not downsize and outsource it. So it’s the rich who deserve tax breaks.

"It looks like President Obama sat down with Larry Summers, Tim Geithner and his other Rubinomics holdovers from the Clinton/Goldman-Sachs Administration and asked what policies can be funded without taxing the wealthy....(Michael Hudson at Counterpunch)

or this:

"According to new figures from the Census Bureau, the poverty rate in America in 2009 jumped to 15%, up from 13.2% of the population in 2008. That would be one in seven of us, or about 45 million people living below the poverty line of $22,000 for a family of four. Now, obviously, things are pretty tough for people who are earning a lot more than that. It's not easy getting by with a family of four on $35,000, especially in some parts of the country, so the real poverty rate is probably a whole lot higher than 15%, but let's not quibble. The point is that we now have the highest rate of poverty that the country has seen since the mid-'60s.

"Obama is claiming that growing the economy is the answer for these people,,,,,,

"The problem with this answer is that economic growth doesn't guarantee jobs, and it also doesn't guarantee that any jobs created, or already there, will pay better wages.

"So the president's claim, that promoting economic growth is going to help the poor, is bogus. Growth helps investors. It helps business owners. But it doesn't necessarily help the poor.

"To help the poor you need programs of income support, and you need jobs, but the way you get the poor employed is to hire them--now!--with government money.

"Not by extending tax breaks to the wealthy, who just hoard it anyhow, or invest it in speculative ventures.

"Either the president is fooling himself, or he is trying to fool the public. Growth is not going to solve the poverty crisis or the jobs crisis.

"What America needs right now is not economic growth, it's economic development, which is defined as the development of economic wealth of a country for the well-being of its inhabitants. Normally applied to developing countries, it is now clearly what we need in America after several decades of de-industrialization, union-busting, and exporting of jobs and manufacturing, and a dramatic widening of the gap between the rich and the rest of the population."  (Dave Lindorff at This Cant Be Happening)

But a true Democratic 21st century New Deal populist message reveals people's enthusiasm.

From John Nichols at The Nation: "....Rev. Jesse Jackson told more than 7,000 cheering progressives at a county fairgrounds in rural Wisconsin Saturday:

“ 'There is a contest for the soul of America.......'We cannot subsidize bankers and leave people homeless on the streets of America,” Jackson said. 'It’s time for a change!'
 
“ 'We will fight back!' chanted the crowd.....

"The enthusiastic response for Jackson’s populist speech offered a reminder that there is no enthusiasm gap. There's a message gap."