MICHAEL BARONE: Democratic Dogs That Aren’t Barking.

The stimulus package, for example, is not mentioned much. Nor are proposals by serious Democrats like Clinton administration veteran William Galston for a national infrastructure bank. These dogs aren’t barking.

The reasons are obvious. The stimulus didn’t stimulate the economy the way the Reagan tax cuts did in the 1980s. As for infrastructure, as Obama sheepishly admitted, there is no such thing — given environmental reviews and bureaucratic torpor—as a shovel-ready project.

Nor have Democrats been talking much, except when questioned at debates, about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare. This is by far the most consequential legislative achievement of the Obama Democrats. But the consequences, most voters continue to believe, are mostly negative.

One hears even less, from either side, about Democrats’ success at imposing higher tax rates on high earners. You might expect Republicans to avoid the subject, as they do. But so do Democrats. Soaking the rich evidently doesn’t win votes.

All of this matters because the Obama Democrats expected their policies to be popular. They thought voters would appreciate being showered with what Mitt Romney infelicitously called “free stuff.” The New Deal historians assured us that in times of economic distress voters would have a hearty appetite for big government.

Liberal bloggers have been claiming that opinion on Obamcare is turning around and that Republicans are shunning the issue. But there has been no turnaround since the law was passed in March 2010. Republicans in the most recent week have run 12,000 ads on Obamacare — more than on any other issue, according to the 2017 Project’s Jeffrey Anderson.

As Holmes might deduce, the solution to the clue of the non-barking Democratic dogs is that most voters lack faith in government to solve problems, to make their lives better or even to perform with minimal competence.

And with reason.