Democrats: Obama goes for the base.

“Right after Mr. Obama’s election, David Plouffe, his senior political strategist then and now, declared America was no longer a center-right country, but had turned center-left.”

--Brit Hume, FoxNews “Special Report”

Let’s correct Plouffe. America is a center-right country. But Plouffe and the Obama team realize that Obama’s base isn’t confined to the left side of the political spectrum. It includes more conservative minority voters and unmarried women, with a large share of both groups believing Obama, Democrats, government itself is on their side while Republicans aren’t.

The latest Fox News Poll found that while respondents believed by 45% to 26% Obama has done more to hurt the economy than help it, the same people believe Republicans are worse, hurting the economy over helping it by 50% to 15%! The Republican brand remains weak.

As we earlier wrote, Obama is trying to mobilize his base against a Republican enemy the way Harry Truman successfully mobilized the country against a “do-nothing 80th Congress” in 1948.

But others are skeptical of Obama’s efforts to channel Truman. Political guru Stuart Rothenberg, writing in Roll Call, pointed out that the times have changed:

President Harry Truman did successfully run against Congress in 1948. But the differences between Truman’s situation and Obama’s are striking. The New Deal coalition was solidly in control back then, so Truman needed merely to activate it against the GOP. The president has a much more difficult job now. . . Running against a dangerous Republican presidential nominee, of course, would be [a] better [strategy].

Similarly, Jay Cost, in the Weekly Standard, wrote:

Truman went hyper-partisan against the Republicans in 1948 because he believed that, deep down, the country was still way more Democratic than Republican (and he was right about that). Obama is [doing the same] because he believes that, deep down, there are still way more Obama supporters than opponents. Let’s keep in mind that this president’s “arrogance to excellence” ratio has always been staggeringly high.

In mobilizing Obama’s base for victory in 2012, Democrats are intrigued by a "Colorado Strategy.” In 2010, a bad year for Democrats nationally, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet won election in a swing state by doing extremely well among minorities, college educated liberals, independent women, social moderates, and environmentalists.

As Jackie Calmes and Mark Landler report in the New York Times:

what buoys Democrats are the changing demographics of formerly Republican states like Colorado, where Democrats won a close Senate race in 2010, as well as Virginia and North Carolina. With growing cities and suburbs, they are populated by increasing numbers of educated and higher-income independents, young voters, Hispanics and African-Americans, many of them alienated by Republicans’ Tea Party agenda. . . Terry Nelson, a campaign adviser to George W. Bush, John McCain and, this year, the former candidate Tim Pawlenty, [noted that] “Obama needs fewer white voters in 2012 than he did in 2008.”

The latest nationwide New York Times/CBS News poll this month showed that . . . independents with household incomes above $100,000 approved of [Obama’s] job performance by 50% to 43%.

Yet the National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar believes Obama’s class warfare pitch is turning off the very higher-income, college-educated independents the “Colorado strategy” seeks to attract:

winning diverse, white-collar battleground states like Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina—more-affluent states with growing numbers of independents[—isn’t helped by] the president’s latest rhetoric, pitting the affluent against the middle class[. It] threatens to turn off the very independents he’s seeking to win back.

We said Obama’s reach covers 63.7% of the electorate. To win, to obtain 50% of the total vote therefore, Obama under a “play to the base” strategy must win 78.5% of his base. Let’s round that off to 80% of the base. (Obama’s theoretical base includes non-citizens as well as citizens from groups—Blacks, Hispanics, youth—with historically lower-than-average turnouts, meaning his voter base is really less than 63.7%, probably less than 60% of those who will show up at the polls, and 50/60 is 83.3%, higher than 80%, so it’s actually being conservative to round off his base-win target to 80%).

In a down economy where jobs are scarce to non-existent, will unmarried females, Blacks, Hispanics, other minorities, white liberals, and youth vote 80% combined, across-the-board to re-elect Obama? Seems a tall order. Obama will win votes beyond his base, but not all that many in a campaign thus far overwhelmingly focused on the base.

You know that holding his base won’t be easy, when even Obama’s long-time adviser David Axelrod calls the upcoming election a “titanic struggle.”