I had dinner the other night with a Democratic pollster who told me Democrats are heading toward next fall's mid-term elections with a serious enthusiasm gap: The Republican base is fired up. The Democratic base is packing up.

The Democratic base is lethargic because congressional Democrats continue to compromise on everything the base cares about. For a year now it's been nothing but compromises, watered-down ideas, weakened provisions, wider loopholes, softened regulations.

Health care went from what the Democratic base wanted -- single payer -- to a public option, to no public option, to a bunch of ideas that the president tried to explain last week, and it now hangs by a string as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid try to round up conservative Democrats and a 51-vote reconciliation package in the Senate.

The jobs bill went from what the base wanted -- a second stimulus -- to $165 billion of extended unemployment benefits and aid to states and locales, then to $15 billion of tax breaks for businesses that make new hires.

Financial regulation went from tough new capital requirements, sharp constraints on derivative trading, a consumer protection agency, and a resurrection of the Glass-Steagall Act -- all popular with the Dem base -- to some limits on derivatives and a consumer-protection agency inside the Treasury Department and a rearrangement of oversight boxes, and it's now looking like even less.

... These waffles and wiggle rooms have drained the Democratic base of all passion. ... The Republican base, meanwhile, is on a rampage. It's more and more energized by its mad-as-hell populists. Tea partiers, libertarians, Birchers, birthers and Dick Armey astro-turfers are channeling the economic anxieties of millions of Americans against "big government."

First Published: March 2, 2010, 5:00 a.m.