Nate Silver is worried about what's going to happen if Democrats ignore the base any further:
What [Democratic members of Congress] need to remember is that while financial reform and the bank tax are the jobs bill are nice -- things that certainly ought to appeal to swing voters and which could mitigate some of the electoral damage -- they mostly fall into the category of cleaning up the mess. Financial reform isn't what gets any Democrat out of bed in the morning. Things like health care, a climate bill, expanded rights for gays, women, and lesbians, a fairer tax code -- those are the things that signify progress, the promise of which keeps people motivated for the long run. The risk is that, when we get to November, the base looks at the fact that significant progress has not been made on any of those core, defining issues, that the political and procedural hurdles are immense, that Democratic majorities will (at best) shrink, and that the party leadership seems nonchalant in good times and panicky in bad ones. And they'll conclude that the progressive party is incapable of making progress.
And in the short run, saying "ooh, Republicans are scary!" might not make as much difference as you think -- at least not to base voters. That works when Republicans have a chance to implement their agenda, an opportunity which -- even if Democrats were to lose 70 seats in the Congress -- they would not have because of President Obama's veto pen.
Now, look, political cycles are moving faster and faster, and the probability of a turnaround in the momentum back toward the Democrats, even in the near term, is probably greater than generally acknowledged -- even if we can neither identify nor predict the precise mechanism by which this occurs. But I worry that the upside is limited if the base is burned out -- at best toward a Clintonian second term (treading water, competent) and not Reaganesque one (realigning). And these things tend to have a self-fulfilling quality to them -- if the base doesn't believe that you can actually push the country in their direction, they become less likely to donate to you, work for you, and vote for you, and that in turn makes such successes harder to achieve. I don't know if the Democrats have any good moves right now, but watching the base give up hope isn't one of them.
