Greg Sargent is down in the dumps. Turns out that the enthusiasm gap is as huge as ever. In fact, according to the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, the chasm is now 20 points. Sargent — with unintentional humor — bemoans:

[T]he enthusiasm deficit remains enormous, even though Dems have tried everything to turn this around: They’ve chanted Bush’s name in unison for months. They’ve raised the specter of foreign money rigging our elections. They’ve floated the possibility of GOP investigations that will make the 1990s look like a latter-day Era of Good Feelings. And they’ve relentlessly elevated the craziest of Tea Party crazies to iconic status. Yet Dems still aren’t goosed up about this election in anywhere near the numbers they need to be — mainly because the GOP enthusiasm levels are essentially steroidal at this point.

Yeah, it is kind of pathetic that this is all the Dems have to work with. And it makes a mockery of the notion that the electorate is voting against Obama’s party out of “fear.” In fact, the fear-mongering Democrats have discovered that even their own base can’t be scared by a grab bag of bogeymen. Maybe the electorate isn’t operating from its lizard brain but with cool calculation: the Obama agenda needs to be stopped.

Now, it is worth noting that Sargent and his ilk argued strenuously that passage of ObamaCare was necessary to prevent just such malaise in the Democratic base. Turns out that all it did was juice up Republicans and infuriate independents. Who knew?