Bill Daley, the new White House chief of staff, warned the Obama administration at the end of 2009, before Obamacare was passed, that if they failed to move back to the center, they would face crippling losses. From a Washington Post op-ed:
All that is required for the Democratic Party to recover its political footing is to acknowledge that the agenda of the party’s most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans — and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan.
In March of last year, Daley criticized the administration for pushing Obamacare. “They miscalculated on health care,” Daley told the New York Times. “The election of ’08 sent a message that after 30 years of center-right governing, we had moved to center left — not left.”