UM, MAUREEN, HE ALREADY DID THAT -- AND WHAT DID HE GET IN RETURN?

Maureen Down is griping about the president again, in a column called "Losing the Room":

WASHINGTON -- On the most deadly day here since Sept. 11, 2001, with the capital reeling over the sadly familiar scene of a mass shooting by a madman, the chief executive stepped to the microphones and captured the heartbreak

It wasn't the chief executive of the nation. It was Dr. Janis Orlowski, the chief operating officer of MedStar Washington Hospital Center, where three of those injured were being treated....

President Obama also gave a speech Monday, talking at the White House while the drama unfolded at the supposedly secure Navy Yard nearby. He could have posted his original remarks on the White House Web site and replaced them with a cri de coeur on gun control, or comfort for the shaken city. The 12 who died were, after all, under his aegis as workers in a federal building.

But, jarringly, the president went ahead with his political attack, briefly addressing the slaughter before moving on to jab Republicans over the corporate tax rate and resistance to Obamacare....

Yeah, Maureen, the president could have delivered "a cri de coeur on gun control" -- which, if you'll recall, was exactly what he did after Sandy Hook. He followed that up with a major effort to pass new gun laws, an effort your fellow Beltway Heathers warned him was a bad way to try to spend the political capital he'd just amassed in his successful reelection campaign.

And the Heathers had a point, because when it comes to guns, it's Wayne LaPierre's world, and we all just shelter in place in it, hoping not to die.

Dowd goes on to complain that "The man who connected so electrically and facilely in 2008, causing Americans to overlook his thin résumé, cannot seem to connect anymore."

But he never connected with insanely angry right-wingers, even then -- and the party of insanely angry right-wingers continues to run Washington, as it has without pause since January 20, 1981, either controlling the government or making it impossible for Democrats to govern.

Obama won the popular vote in 2008 by 53%-46%. His job approval/disapproval in the latest Washington Post/Pew poll, released yesterday, is 47%/47%. A drop from 53% to 47%? Obama hasn't really lost that much of the room, Maureen.