Obama vows to fight for jobs in retooled message
WASHINGTON
"I'm not going to win every round," Obama told a town hall
audience. But, striking a populist tone on a campaign-style swing,
Obama pledged, "I can promise you there will be more fights in the
days ahead."
He used the word "fight" or some variation over a dozen times
as he tried out a revamped message focused mainly on the economy,
part of a stepped up effort to persuade Americans he's doing all he
can to create jobs.
"This isn't about me. This is about you," he said.
And while he has recently voiced a willingness to find common
ground in the divisive health care debate, he insisted he was not
ready to abandon the cause or to drop his environmental and energy
agenda even with the strengthened GOP hand in the Senate.
"There are things that have to be done," he said. "And that
means marching forward, not standing still." He acknowledged "we
had a little bit of a buzz saw" on health care overhaul.
Instead of the anniversary celebration Obama might have
expected, the week was one of the worst in recent times for the
White House, with much hand-wringing and blame-casting among dazed
Democrats in the halls of Congress.
The week brought two major shifts to the political landscape.
Little-known Republican Scott Brown's seizing of the
Massachusetts Senate seat held for decades by the late Sen. Edward
M. Kennedy cost Democrats their filibuster-proof supermajority of
60 votes in the Senate and seriously threatened Obama's entire
domestic agenda. It means Republicans will be able to stop or
seriously slow down legislation at will.
The GOP victory was also a poor omen for November's midterms,
continuing a trend that began with Democratic losses in November in
gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey. Also, a succession
of Democratic lawmakers have decided to retire rather than face
voters this year.
Thursday's Supreme Court ruling overturning limits on corporate
political spending opened the way for businesses and special
interests to spend money freely on commercials for or against
individual candidates. Obama said the 5-4 decision would allow
wealthy special interests to "drown out the voices of everyday
Americans."
The opinion could have an impact on this fall's races that could
disproportionately work to the disadvantage of Democrats.
While the ruling also opened the way for unions to spend
directly on campaign commercials, union membership has been
steadily declining. It's down from its peak of about 35 percent of
workers in the 1950s to 12.3 percent in 2009, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported on Friday. The bureau said the decline was
hastened by the recession.
Republicans sought to capitalize on their Massachusetts windfall
by stepping up their attacks on Obama and congressional Democrats.
House Minority leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, asserted that his
home state "is desperate for a plan to put Americans back to
work." But he claimed Obama's health care and climate-change
proposals would destroy jobs.
"Like the people of Massachusetts, Ohioans are saying `enough
is enough' of the big-government agenda," Boehner wrote in an
op-ed piece in Friday's Cleveland Plain Dealer. Ohio's unemployment
rate climbed to 10.9 percent in December, up from 10.7 percent in
November and the ninth successive month of double-digit
unemployment.
Buoyed congressional Republicans have their sights on winning
back majority control they lost in 2006, seeing potential gains in
Ohio, Michigan, New York and Arkansas.
Obama last came to this northeastern Ohio county in 2008 for a
campaign speech on the economy at a drywall factory that closed two
months later. En route Friday to a wind turbine plant, his
motorcade whizzed by a snowy landscape of scores of buildings
either for lease or sale.
Obama told his audience at the Lorain County Community College
"the worst of this economic storm has passed. But families like
yours and communities like Elyria are still reeling from the
devastation left in its wake. Folks have seen jobs you thought
would last forever disappear."
He said a new stimulus spending bill emerging in Congress -- the
White House is calling it a "jobs" bill -- must include tax breaks
for small business hiring and for people trying to make their homes
more energy efficient -- two proposals he wasn't able to get into a
bill the House passed last month.
Obama defended as necessary his administration's widely
unpopular moves to bail out financial and auto companies. He also
stepped up his recent attack on bankers and bonuses, defending his
proposal to tax big banks to recover bailout costs and to limit
their size and activities.
With the town hall meeting, tours of a wind turbine plant and
classroom, an impromptu diner stop and even the lack of a necktie,
Obama's day had the feel of one from his campaign.
Outside the town hall meeting were groups of anti-Obama
protesters. "He's done a lot, but they are all negative things,"
said Ray Angell, 65, of Twinsburg, Ohio, a conservative active in
the anti-tax Tea Party movement. He cited the stimulus package and
climate change proposals.
In an interview with ABC News this week, a reflective Obama said
that he recognized "remoteness and detachment" had set in and
that he blamed himself for not communicating better. "I think we
lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American
people," he said.
Strategists of both parties said Obama needs to do more to reach
out to Republicans, pointing out that few recent presidents have
had filibuster-proof majorities in Congress and yet have managed to
pass major legislation.
Also, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton managed to snap
back from huge first-term midterm losses for their respective
parties in to win big re-election victories.
Doug Schoen, a Democratic consultant who was Clinton's pollster,
said Obama should take a cue from his former boss.
"He absolutely has to move to the center," Schoen said,
"change his focus, try to reach out to the Republicans and try to
change his rhetorical approach as well as the way he governs."