This was a no brainer. Several commenters have pointed out in recent weeks that you don't endear people to your cause by hectoring them:

"Hectoring your supporters doesn't work, and it never has," Hamsher said. "And anyone with as much campaign experience as Obama and [Vice President] Biden knows that, which is why you never saw them do it in their own races."

Obama and Biden have in recent weeks repeatedly pressed the voters who propelled them into office in 2008 to get off the sidelines, with Biden going as far as to jokingly, but repeatedly, insult those voters at his rallies.

But members of the "professional left," a term coined by Robert Gibbs in an interview with The Hill, said that Obama and Biden's admonitions to Democrats to "stop whining" will not turn the tide in favor of Democrats.

If anything, Obama's lecturing has helped Republicans as it has revealed just what kind of leader Democrats elected in 2008. "You're stupid if you don't do as I tell you" is not a way to win friends and influence people.