Arianna Huffington: At the moment, the White House seems to be following the standard Washington playbook, which is premised on two dubious assumptions: a) elections are decided by "independents" b) "independents" are always to be found in the middle of the road. So, the Beltway thinking goes, count on those in your base to come out, and run a middle-of-the-road campaign to win over those independents before your opponent can. It's the classic way to run a campaign. And it was proven completely wrong in 2008 by the winning coalition that swept Obama to victory. He didn't win by swerving to the middle. Instead of fighting for the ever-dwindling number of swing voters, Obama fought to win over the much larger number of voters who had turned their backs on the process. It was audacious -- and it worked. But what will happen to all those 2008 first-time voters, many of whom have been disproportionately hurt by the recession?
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