hope_questionmarkYesterday, Micah Sifry at TechPresident posted an article that has already drawn quite a bit of praise for its description of how the Obama administration has fallen short of the Obama campaign’s image of grassroots populism:

… the image of Barack Obama as the candidate of “change”, community organizer, and “hope-monger” (his word), was sold intensively during the campaign. Even after the fact, we were told that his victory represented the empowerment of a bottom-up movement, powered by millions of small donors, grassroots volunteers, local field organizers and the internet….

… In The Audacity to Win, [Obama's 2008 campaign manager David] Plouffe writes often of an “enthusiasm gap” that he saw between Obama’s supporters and the other Democratic candidates…. Now, there is a new enthusiasm gap, but it’s no longer in Obama’s favor. That’s because you can’t order volunteers to do anything–you have to motivate them, and Obama’s compromises to almost every powers-that-be are tremendously demotivating.

Obviously, this demotivation and disappointment has been covered extensively here at FDL.  But since it’s now 2010 — a fresh start, a clean slate, all that nonsense — and I’m an incurable idiot optimist, let’s raise the question of how the president and other Democrats could correct this problem.

No, this doesn’t mean we should expect Obama (or anyone else) to have a dramatic personal revelation that it’s his destiny to become the Flaming Sword of Progressive Truth that he certainly hasn’t been so far.  Instead, I’m assuming a smaller, more pragmatic lightbulb-goes-on moment… namely, the realization that if they don’t give their base something to feel good about in the next 10 months, the Democrats could be in for a painful November wake-up call.

As I suggested last month, for example, even a small follow-up bill to create jobs could combine with the two-thirds of the money still due to be spent from the 2009 stimulus package to put the economy in a more promising position by the end of the year.

And regarding healthcare reform, assuming the House and Senate finish making their legislative sausage by Obama’s “State of the Union” address to Congress, wouldn’t it be something of a political masterstroke to announce a plan to strengthen and complete the watered-down bill by passing an expansion of Medicare using budget reconciliation rules?  That would be a classic example of doing the hard, unpleasant work during the off year, and delivering the most popular aspect of reform right before the 2010 elections.

Please suggest your own wishful-thinking-but-kinda-plausible ideas in the comments.  Sure, it’s easy to snark that none of it will happen, but you never know… maybe Rahm or someone is waking up with a hangover this morning, and realizing that the one they’ll have in November will be a lot worse if they don’t get their act together.