Former Hillary strategist: Obama plan is awesome — if he wants to lose the election

(By Ed Morrissey, Hot Air) - Barack Obama’s team seems to think that demonizing the wealthy will win him back his base and let him roll to re-election.  Not so fast, says Democratic strategist and former Hillary Clinton adviser Mark Penn at Huffington Post.  Obama’s plan makes for great strategy, Penn says, only if the President wants to pattern his next election like that famous Democrat, 'Walter Mondale':

Obama’s team actually believes that in the last six months they have courted independent voters and that didn’t work, so now they are turning to activating the base with higher taxes on the wealthy. However, he never made any meaningful appeal to those voters in terms they would understand. He supported extending the Bush tax cuts, temporarily zoomed up in the polls, and then promptly repudiated what he had done, only to then fall back down.

The 2010 mid-term elections were fought over Obama’s healthcare plan and on his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy by ending the Bush tax cuts. The results were, in his own words, a “shellacking.” After his most recent speech to Congress, voters in New York City’s Ninth Congressional District just elected a Republican for the first time since 1920.

And now, Obama is pressing the case for higher taxes, following in the footsteps of Walter Mondale. Higher taxes always seem to poll well, but in reality the country sees that as a last resort.