Obama made an appearance at the Democrats annual retreat to pledge his support for them, and his willingness to campaign on their behalf, in exchange for passage of his health care bill.

Seeking to portray themselves as hard at work rather than relaxing as millions of Americans remain unemployed, Democrats eschewed their usual three-day trip to Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg in favor of an auditorium at the visitor center. 

That’s the description of the Democrats – “hard at work”.  Normally they would be living it up, but because America is unemployed they’ll portray themselves as hard at work. Good to know they’re willing to put us first since their health care takeover clearly doesn’t.

“Change is hard. Change doesn’t happen overnight.”  That’s the message from the administration as they’re confronted with the laundry list of promises they have failed to keep.

During his two-year campaign, Obama thrilled massive crowds with soaring speeches, often railing against an Iraq war that now is seldom mentioned. His presidential comments now are often sober updates on issues like terrorism and the economy, a top priority now that emerged as a major issue only in the campaign’s final weeks.

Obama’s campaign ambition has been diluted with a pragmatism that has been the hallmark of Year One — without much of the progress he had hoped.

Those failed promises and the Democrats’ effort to ram through a massively unpopular health care reform package are having a major impact in Massachusetts.  The state Obama carried by 26 points looks like it may be headed toward the election of a Republican to fill the seat of the late Ted Kennedy.

Riding a wave of opposition to President Obama’s push for health-care reform, the Republican candidate seeking to fill Ted Kennedy’s old Massachusetts Senate seat has surged into the lead, a surprising new poll showed late yesterday.

While the difference falls within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4 points, if it holds it would be a stunning upset in a Democratic stronghold, and would likely scuttle Obama’s efforts to overhaul the nation’s health-care system.

No word yet on whether Chicago style election fixing has been taught at Harvard.

Finally, Democrats unhappy with the precipitous drop in Obama’s polling numbers have decided a new way to counter the slide – blame the pollster.

A recent case in point is what has happened to Scott Rasmussen, an independent pollster we both work with, who has an unchallenged record for both integrity and accuracy. Mr. Rasmussen correctly predicted the 2004 and 2008 presidential races within a percent, and accurately called the vast majority of contested Senate races in 2004 and 2006. His work has sometimes been of concern for Republicans, particularly when they were losing congressional seats in 2004 and 2006.

Most recently, Mr. Rasmussen has been the leader in chronicling the decline in the public’s support for President Obama. And so he has been the target of increasingly virulent attacks from left-wing bloggers seeking to undermine his credibility, and thus muffle his findings. A Politico piece, “Low Favorables: Democrats Rip Rasmussen,” reported on the attacks from blogs like the Daily Kos, Swing State Project, and Media Matters.

Remember all those assertions the Democrats made about the Republicans quashing dissent? It looks like they’re no willing to savage the reputation of a renowned polling firm because they don’t like the results of his analysis.  To the Democrats we just say, “Pot, meet kettle.”