Responding to the unprecedented loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat to Republicans, the White House has responded not with conciliation, but with a more aggressive public image.
Chief political adviser David Axelrod has completed a striking "rebranding" of the cool, rational President Barack Obama.
Unnamed administration sources indicate that Obama will focus exclusively on populist issues until the November midterm elections.
"Voters are understandably angry," according to one official. "They need to see Democrats as the party that punishes Wall Street, regulates fat-cat bankers and insults pick-up trucks," one adviser said.
The new, angry Obama was unveiled in a speech in economically depressed Lorain County, Ohio. Walking onto the stage with pyrotechnic flash-pots blazing, the president shouted, "I was sent to Washington to kick ass and chew arugula. And the White House organic garden is all out of arugula."
"This is not the serene, Spock-like Obama the people voted for in 2008," said Larry Sabato, political science professor at the University of Virginia. "It's like he's from a parallel universe or something."
The administration is mum about how this transformation will impact Obama's upcoming State of the Union address. Axelrod would only reveal the opening line: "The era of hope and change is over."