Don't worry, Democrats -- Be Happy!,

So says Charles Blow, trying to rally the troops. But first he has to admit that things aren't looking too good at the moment. It's not just that Obama's approval ratings have fallen, nor that the numbers of people who think the country's moving in the wrong direction have climbed to over 60%, "for the first time since the Bush years" -- it's also that over 40% of the people now self-identify as "conservative", vs. 20% "liberal". And the really scary thing is that there seem to be some "factors" in the real world that relate to these bad polling numbers:

Obama has been an abysmal salesman; Americans’ patience has the lifespan of a fruit fly; we are still mired in two intractable wars; the economy has yet to turn the corner; anxiety is mounting over ballooning deficits; and oil is still gushing into the gulf.

I'm not sure what the "intractable" war is besides Afghanistan, and we should probably cut him some slack on the dissing of Americans' patience, given the polls, but those other factors all look pretty dismal, no? Particularly galling must be that first one, Obama as "abysmal salesman" -- wasn't it his silver tongue that got him the job in the first place, and was going to transform American politics for a generation?

Ah, well. Whenever things look bad, just remember -- there's always the "long term". Things will just "get better", and then they won't look so bad, or something.

He actually has a point about the recession, or so we all should hope -- despite all manner of government bungling, capitalism generally rights itself sooner rather than later. And for the future, well, apparently there's growing "diversity", education, and irreligion to keep hope alive for shivering Democrats. He might have some kind of point there too, but -- and I'm just throwing this out -- what if none of those things really made the growing numbers of non-Democrats feel any better about the reaching tentacles of Big Gov swaddling embrace of Big Nanny?