It’s looking like the captain of class warfare’s campaign against capitalism, free-markets and liberty isn’t working as planned. According to ABC News, the Democrat Party in key battleground states has lost nearly one million registered voters. I guess they’ve had enough of hope and change.

President Obama’s uphill battle to re-election is getting steeper.

A report released today by the centrist think-tank Third Way showed that more than 825,000 voters in eight key battleground states have fled the Democratic Party since Obama won election in 2008.

“The numbers show that Democrats’ path to victory just got harder,” said Lanae Erickson, the report’s co-author. “We are seeing both an increase in independents and a decrease in Democrats and that means the coalition they have to assemble is going to rely even more on independents in 2012 than it did in 2008.”

Amid frustrating partisan gridlock and unprecedentedly low party-approval ratings, the number of voters registering under a major party is falling fast, but it is also falling disproportionately.

In eight states that will be must-wins in 2012 – Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina and Pennsylvania – Democrats lost 5.4 percent of their registered voters while Republicans lost 3.1 percent. The number of independent voters in those states jumped 3.4 percent. (Read More)

Obama’s supporters argue that he can win the independent vote. But if you look at what happened in the 2010 midterm elections and recent polls of independents, it’s not likely he’s going to win them back. I doubt most independent voters are on board with this sort of hard-left rhetoric:

“Now, it’s a simple theory,” said Obama. ”And we have to admit, it’s one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That’s in America’s DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker. But here’s the problem: It doesn’t work. It has never worked.

Does he honestly believe that a majority of us want to see the federal government increased even more? Does he think we believe bureaucrats are better stewards of wealth than the people who create the wealth? This is the same government that spent nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on penis pumps, for crying out loud.

I hope he keeps this up until November of 2012. I hope he keeps telling the American people how much we suck, and we need a bigger government to take care of us because we’re too inept to see to our own affairs and create our own prosperity. Let’s see how that plays outside his base.

Update: Be sure to read Maggie’s post on Obama’s speech that includes Rush Limbaugh’s reaction.

Update 2: Also check out Daniel Henninger’s latest in the WSJ.

Update 3: Welcome, NewsBusters readers!