Politics is all about voter turnout and enthusiasm of the base. Trying to convert the base of one party to turn to another party is a fool’s errand. Motivating “never befores” to vote for the first time is something Obama did in 2008. He got young voters excited about his liberal policies. Of course, they were excited. Most of them are not working, attending schools using borrowed money guaranteed by the government, and have no idea how an economy works.

An ABC story is telling us that Obama is losing a million voters in key battleground states:

A report released today by the centrist think-tank Third Way showed that more than 825,000 voters in eight key battleground states have fled the Democratic Party since Obama won election in 2008.

“The numbers show that Democrats’ path to victory just got harder,” said Lanae Erickson, the report’s co-author. “We are seeing both an increase in independents and a decrease in Democrats and that means the coalition they have to assemble is going to rely even more on independents in 2012 than it did in 2008.”

Obama did not bring in Utopia. His lofty rhetoric got smacked by economic and political reality. Young people have watched too much television where problems are solved in 30- and 60-minute bursts, counting about 8 to 15 minutes of commercials. It’s been three years, and Obama and Co., have only taken us backwards. Disillusionment has set in. Now it’s back to drugs, sex, and rock and roll, or whatever the music trend is today.

Consider these statistics:

In eight states that will be must-wins in 2012 – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – Democrats lost 5.4 percent of their registered voters while Republicans lost 3.1 percent. The number of independent voters in those states jumped 3.4 percent.

“People are frustrated and the way you tune out in American politics is that is you drop the label of the two parties,” said Steven Jarding, a Harvard public policy professor and Democratic campaign strategist. “The danger for Obama in this is he is not only going to have to capture them but capture more of them because there are less Democratic voters.”

It’s hard to get people enthusiastic twice when the first election did not bring out the desired results. The Republicans still have not learned this. Bob Dole and John McCain are two recent examples of lost enthusiasm. Hopefully the present crop of Republican candidates can take advantage what ABC is reporting about the Democrats, but I’m not optimistic.

The independent vote still could move toward Obama, but the 2010 election results might suggest otherwise:

Obama snagged 52 percent of unaffiliated voters in 2008, but those independents flocked to Republicans in the 2010 midterms with 56 percent opting for a GOP candidate. Between 2008 and 2010, there was a 27-point shift in which party independents chose.

“Independent voters have been the deciding factor in the last two major elections,” said Omar Ali, the national spokesman for IndependentVoting.org. “And they are going to, more than likely, determine the 2012 presidential election.”

American voters don’t light to be lectured. Jimmy Carter did it with his “malaise” speech, and Obama’s done it with Americans are lazy. In the end, however, what the Republicans do will make the biggest difference. Most voters vote for a candidate. If the GOP believes it can win in 2012 based on people voting against Obama, the Grand Old Party is going to lose.