Greg Sargent and I are in complete agreement that the Republicans’ strategy of saying ‘no’ to everything is working beautifully for them. It can be seen in any number of polls, testing any number of public attitudes. People are pissed off at the government and they’re unusually ticked -off with their own representatives. Most representatives are Democrats, so they are more at risk. The more risk they feel, the more skittish they become, and our unity is diminished, making it even easier to block or water down the president’s agenda.

The anger does not appear to be ideologically consistent or focused. While the health care bill is increasing in popularity it still has a net-negative rating. On the other hand, more than 60% of the people want the government to extend unemployment benefits. There’s anxiety that the government is doing too much and that it is not doing enough.

Now, I’m going to be unusually blunt here. These midterms are not actually elections that the Democrats want to win. Political fortunes move like a pendulum. It’s simply not possible to win four elections in a row in a two-party system. And the elections we really want to win are in 2012. Winning now would make that impossible. What we want is to lose, but lose modestly. That might seem like a strange thing to say, but you have to think of the big picture. In the 1982 midterm elections, Ronald Reagan’s Republican Party lost 27 seats in the House, while the Senate ratio remained unchanged. Two years later, he won 49 states in his reelection bid against Walter Mondale. Reagan benefitted in the long-term because they lost in 1982. I’m not overly concerned about losing a couple dozen marginal House seats, although I’d be grateful for a repeat of that no-net-change in the Senate.

What worries me is that we’ll have something more akin to the 1994 midterms which pretty much ruined the promise of Bill Clinton’s presidency (before he delivered the final self-inflicted death blow). So, we have to consider why the public isn’t putting two-and-two together and blaming the Republicans for government inaction on key issues of concern. While the administration’s message effort deserves some blame, and the media deserves much more, it’s also a problem that there are precious few Democrats out there explaining the Party of No strategy, the procedures they are using to obstruct, and what would be passed if Republicans (and some conservative Democrats) were not standing in the way. Even more importantly, there are almost no Democrats discussing the incredible amount that has been achieved despite these tactics..

The progressive media excels at pointing out Republican hypocrisy and malfeasance, but they don’t do so well with explaining how and why it works. And, if they don’t hype what’s being accomplished but instead pile-on the administration with their criticism, it appears like everyone is a critic of the president and nothing has been accomplished. But that’s actually a key ingredient in the success of the Party of No strategy.

By forcing Obama to seek his bill-passing votes from a small group of the most conservative and endangered Democrats (like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson), the Republicans make progressives angry with the outcomes of legislation. By preventing the extension of unemployment benefits or stimulus that would improve the jobs situation, they make people upset with the ineffectiveness of the government in power. If you want to aid them in their task, you’ll ignore all the good things that have been done and join the chorus of the frustrated and disappointed. If you want to dance to their tune, by all means, join the bitch-chorus.

But there is a story to be told that’s positive. I’ll keep telling it, because too few others seem to be willing to do so. We can keep our losses manageable, and even leverage them into a two-term presidency and better quality majorities in the second-term. But we put that all at risk by naval-gazing and failing to understand what the Party of No strategy is meant to do, and why it is working.