What's Obama doing to try to fire up drooping Democrats?

But in Madison, Obama tried to change this view. He said the vote was still partly about Republican policies of the past. The “failed policies” of the past helped create the economic crisis, said Obama. The GOP leadership in Congress has been content to just sit back and let the administration deal with the problems “that they had done so much to create,” he said.

Change is still out there. At the big Wisconsin rally, Obama listed what he said were his administration’s accomplishments, such as the passage of health-care reform and Wall Street reform legislation. He said he figures he’s covered “about 70 percent” of the checklist with which he came into office.

But the tone of Washington is as harsh as ever, and according to polls many voters don’t think Obama has brought about the radical change in the nation’s political process that he promised in his presidential race.

Well, said Obama, we’re bringing about change, but it’s hard, and you need to stick with me. “Change is going to come, if we still work for it, if we still fight for it,” Obama said

Will this work? Well, it’s almost certain that the Democrats are going to lose a lot of House seats, so what’s at issue is not so much victory as a softening of the loss. There is some evidence, too, that voters still view Republicans as partly to blame for the economic crisis, meaning they might not view the election as solely a referendum on Obama. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 56 percent of respondents believe that the president inherited the current problems with the economy.

But only 42 percent of respondents in the NBC survey approve of how Obama has handled the economy he inherited. Other poll data, from surveys about whether the country is on the right or wrong track, to the question of whether voters prefer to vote for generic Democratic or GOP congressional candidates, all point to a Republican wave in November, according to polling expert Steve Lombardo, who worked for President George H.W. Bush.

“We are seeing an intensifying political storm that for Democrats is the electoral equivalent of a catastrophic hurricane,” wrote Mr. Lombardo in an analysis on Pollster.com.

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