Michael Riley of the Denver Post has a must-read piece today about the reversal of the political landscape in the West over the last 18 months. After a series of recent elections where Democrats were ascendant - capped off by the 2008 DNC in Denver followed by Obama winning Colorado by a whopping 9 points in November - the Democrats' fortunes in the Mountain West have been heading, well, south:

President Obama arrives in Colorado today with approval ratings in the state lower than his national average. Early polls suggest Reid's re-election bid may be the biggest loss for the party since the unseating of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004. Ritter, lagging badly in polls and saying he needed to dedicate more time to his family, isn't running for a second term.

"Colorado led on one end, and now it looks like it will be leading on the other," said Jennifer Duffy, who tracks Senate races across the country for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

She pointed out that both top-line races in the state — for governor and U.S. Senate — are at best toss-ups.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a beneficiary of Obama's fundraising stop today, trails Republicans in most statewide polls. Reid, for whom Obama will appear Friday at a Nevada fundraiser, also lags behind his top Republican opponents in surveys there.

The permanence of the Western strategy for the Democrats "may have been a myth," Duffy said.

The Democrats' Western strategy grew out of "The Emerging Democratic Majority" these of John Judis and Ruy Teixeira.  The idea was for Democrats to take advantage of the favorable demographics of the region by targeting voters with an appealing message. It worked: Democrats made gains in the Mountain West in recent cycles. Here is how one successful Democratic politician from the West described the party's winning message:

"For the [Democratic] party, it means a new, or a renewed, emphasis on issues predominating in the interior West. Part of that is people want a good quality of life, do not want government to dictate to them how they live their lives. They want good government but not big government. They're looking for pragmatic folks who produce results."

Here's the irony as well as the problem: that quote came from Janet Napolitano in 2007.  Ken Salazar is another example of a Western Democrat who was successful in casting the values of his party in the kind of moderate, libertarian-tinged messaging that resonates with voters in the West.

Yet Napolitano and Salazar are now members of an administration pushing exactly the kind of big government agenda that Napolitano warned against - and the results in the West (and elsewhere) are exactly what you'd expect.

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