They did have the option of not firing Howard Dean once

Oh well. Good luck with this, though.

Where do we go from here? Democrats need to stop being swayed by momentary fluctuations in approval polls. Except in the South, President Obama’s poll ratings are mediocre, not terrible. He’s never gotten as low in the polls as Truman, Nixon, Carter, or Bush the lesser. Running away from the President was a futile gesture that fooled nobody. There was no rational reason for the President to stay away from states that he carried in 2008 or 2012. I really think he could have energized the base in Florida, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Colorado. The DNC and DSCC are still singing from the 1990’s Clintonian hymnbook: triangulate, obfuscate, and woo independent voters. Team Obama successfully ran a base election in 2012 and it should be the model for off-years in the future.  Remember, the GOP won a wave victory in 1994 when the Clinton model was at its apogee. That’s my new favorite word, I plan to use va-va-voom more as well even if Nicki Minaj beat me to the punch.

Only quibble with that is 2008 was the "base election."  By 2012 they'd already started moving away from that.