Dems can't believe how awful WH's political operations have become

House Democrats lost a special election in the liberal Hawaii district Obama grew up in, and they have griped that the president didn’t do more to help ease one of the candidates out.

And the White House failed to head of bitter Senate primaries for three Democratic-held Senate seats – in Arkansas, Colorado and Pennsylvania – that Republicans could snatch away this fall. Last fall, Obama vacillated on how much to help Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia—he worked hard in one case, and kept his distance in another—and the party was routed in both instances.

One senior House Democrat said it is baffling “how one group of people can be so good at campaigning and so bad at politics” — a phrasing nearly identical to that of a second veteran House Democrat who expressed the same sentiment.

Lawmakers say the White House seems capable of handling only one issue at a time — a stunning contrast to the candidate whose campaign promised that he could “walk and chew gum” at the same time in 2008.