“Change is a powerful branding message in every election, and his in ’08 was elegantly clear,” Baskin says. “All you had to say was, ‘I want a change.’ That led you directly to ‘I’m going to vote for Obama,’ irrespective of the other half of the ratio,” his record of delivering.

Baskin says Obama lost control of his brand once he took office.

“As a marketer, it blows me away how poorly he has defined and marketed his brand over the last two years. He didn’t tell people what he stood for and what he was going to do,” he says, adding that the president didn’t respond effectively to Republican efforts to fill in those blanks, including their attacks on the health care law as a threat to American liberty and the well-being of seniors.

“You can’t argue ‘death panel’ with a 20-minute explanation of the merits of elder care,” Baskin says, referring to accusations about provisions affecting Medicare.

Pollster Stan Greenberg in an analysis for the left-leaning Democracy Corps criticizes Democrats for offering “a jumble of messages” over the past two years.