"Houston. Obama has a problem."

It's bad enough when the opposing party is banging on you, but when your core supporters say they're “ exhausted" from defending you, that is code blue.

Ruh roh.

“I'm exhausted of defending you, defending your administration, defending the mantle of change that I voted for, and deeply disappointed with where we are right now,” said Velma Hart at President Obama's economic town hall in Washington D.C. Monday. Hart is the chief financial officer of AMVETS, a veterans’ organization, and her husband is a facilities administrator at the Verizon Center in Washington.

• Who Is Velma Hart?• Tunku Varadarajan: What Did Velma Hart Expect?The big problem for Obama is that Hart thinks he's disconnected from the world she sees and feels. After Obama answered her question, Hart said Obama didn’t answer her most troubling issue: whether this economy is “the new reality.”

And so the hope machine is running out of gas.

Obama may be about to experience a “new reality” himself: If you don’t feel peoples’ pain, they’re gonna give you some of theirs.

And Republicans will pounce. Now they can say, "It's not just us, Mr. President. It's your own supporters who agree with us. You don't get it. You're not in touch."

The Democrats may feature in their ads Republican leader John Boehner (likely future Speaker of the House), but now the GOP can feature Velma Hart.

Real People. Real Pain.

And Obama may be about to experience a "new reality" himself: If you don't feel peoples' pain, they're gonna give you some of theirs.

As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono.