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The Democrats are celebrating their victory in the Senate that allows the healthcare proposals to move forward. But are they so busy focusing on the details of legislation that they have forgotten the fight for the big picture ? Could that be something to do with the president's approval ratings ?

Their campaign group, Organizing for America, has written to supporters warning:

"Right now, Sarah Palin is on a highly publicised, nationwide book tour, attacking President Obama and his plan for health reform at every turn. It's dangerous. Remember, this is the person who coined the term 'Death Panels' - and opened the flood gates for months of false attacks by special interests and partisan extremists. Whatever lie comes next will be widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform."

They are appealing for money to pay for adverts and events to fight back. But all this looks terribly defensive for a party that has a president who was meant to represent a changing America and capture the changing mood of a nation.

Mr Obama's administration is sometimes accused of never getting out of campaign mode. It seems to me the danger for the Democrats is quite the reverse. They seem to have given up on selling their story, abandoned the attempt to describe their American dream. If I am right, they can expect big losses in next year's elections.

Take just two examples from last week: the new advice on breast cancer and the decision to try the .

before a Senate committee had him exclaiming "I know that we are at war", suggesting that he wasn't going to be pushed around by terrorists, and giving a nod and a wink that if the good senators were worried by the possibility of an acquittal, that wasn't going to happen.

This exemplifies the desperate hole in Democratic strategy. It certainly openly addresses the Republican senators' concerns, but they are hardly going to be swayed. There was no attempt to reflect the rest of the world's rejection of the idea of a war on an abstract noun, no exploration of why the accused seem desperate to be tried in a military tribunal, and no suggestion that American values were better expressed in open trials than .

I hasten to add, I am not taking sides in the argument, but pointing out that the Democrats are fighting back against accusations, not putting the case for their counter-terrorism strategy. Rebuttal may be necessary but it cannot be a strategy for government. It allows battles to take place on the opponents' chosen ground.

A recent report advising women not to test for breast cancer until they were 50 was seized upon by Republicans, not least in Saturday's healthcare debate in the Senate, as evidence of the way government would ration healthcare if allowed the foot-in-the-door of a publicly run insurance scheme.

At the time the story was first reported, there were hints that the committee had been persuaded by the insurance industry to limit expensive testing. Democrats seemed to forget that the president had told them, when he addressed both houses in September that "insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine check-ups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer".

Of course, this would mean new costs for the industry, but they would be greatly reduced if testing started 10 years later than has been the practice. Democrats failed to point out that big business, as much as big government, might have a reason to delay testing, and that the insurance companies' concerns were a little more immediate.
Again, I am not suggesting who is right and who is wrong, but that Democrats aren't bothering to make a case.

This points to a deeper problem. There is little doubt that the Obama administration is widely perceived as extending the role of federal government, while it seems that a majority of Americans dislike and distrust big government. The Democrats don't seem to know how to cope with this.

They could argue that it is a misperception; they could maintain that all government is big government these days; they could argue that big government protects little people. It really doesn't matter too much what their rationale is, as long as they have one. The Democrats have a great communicator as president, but at the moment, they don't seem to have a story to tell.

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