The signs of an intraparty rift are easy to spot, and tensions are rising between a Democratic White House concerned with its own image and congressional allies facing their toughest election in years. A muted public (and political) reaction to the Democratic National Committee's big 2010 campaign roll-out was followed by public complaints from Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Chris Van Hollen.
Now, the establishment is taking notice: Flagship center-left think tank the Center for American Progress hosted an event Tuesday that echoed the concerns of the congressional wing of the party and its critiques of the president and his DNC chair, Tim Kaine.
The message from Congress and these outside advisers? With midterm elections approaching, it's high time for the White House to start drawing a contrast between the two parties in Congress. The current emphasis on results and fixing Washington isn't jibing with a public that still feels the hurt of recession, is tired of incumbents, and doesn't seem convinced by counterfactual arguments that portray a potentially worse economy. Nearly half of Americans say improving the economy and growing jobs should be the top national priority, so how Democrats lay out their plans on this issue could be the difference between the majority and the minority.
In the presentation at the CAP event, longtime Democratic message maven Stan Greenberg, with CAP president and fellow Clinton alum John Podesta at his side, presented opinion research on how voters -- especially Republican-leaning, white, working-class voters and the Obama coalition of young people, women, and minorities -- react to different messages on economic issues. It became clear in his presentation that Greenberg favors a very different approach from the White House.
Obama and Kaine have discussed the economy in terms of successful policies that are just beginning to work, selling the Democrats as "the party of results." Greenberg polls say that message doesn't give Democrats a huge advantage over their Republican competition.
"Nobody responded to the jobs report the right way," Greenberg told me after the presentation, referring to Friday's announcement of the largest jobs growth in four years. He worries that voters, busy dealing with personal economic problems, won't respond kindly when Democrats tout the policies enacted to ease the burden of the recession.
He urges Democrats to focus more on the future and less on the past. "It doesn't surprise me that people who battled to get an economic plan want to get the credit for it, but it's not about what you're going to do in the future," he says. The strongest message, he says, is emphasizing the benefits to the middle class and drawing a strong contrast with Republicans and corporate interests; Clinton's empathy infused with a post-financial crisis populism. Asked if time remains for Democrats to shift their message, Greenberg says, "This is the moment to do it, when people are paying attention."
Complaints about the White House strategy began last month after President Obama's financial-reform speech at Cooper Union, where he talked about the challenges of overhauling Wall Street in the face of lobbyist opposition -- but didn't mention Republican efforts to slow the financial-reform bill.
Soon after, Democrat congressional leaders asked for a meeting with senior White House staff, including top Obama adviser David Axelrod. Axelrod asked the leaders to campaign on their results and tough votes, saying that what Democrats fought for showed courage. In turn, the congressional leaders asked the White House to speak more clearly about Republican obstruction.
"The message I would convey to the White House folks is that we are proud of these accomplishments, [but] you can't talk about Washington being broken without explaining who broke it and who is in the way of fixing it," a Democratic official who works on election strategy told me. "It boomerangs back on us."
The dilemma is clear. Obama remains much more popular than his congressional allies, yet his approval ratings still hover at about 50 percent. With polling suggesting that Republicans could take control of the House next year, and the 2012 presidential race looming, the Obama's advisers clearly want him to stay above the fray and separate from the ordinary politics of Washington -- especially with GOP votes needed for financial reform and to confirm his Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan.
"The president ran as an outsider. A lot of his messages were similar to what we used in 2006 and 2008," the Democratic official says. With Democrats now responsible for government, though, congressional Democrats say the strategy needs to shift into not just what they've done but also the obstacles that stand in the way of their agenda.
"Congress is working to try and rein in spending -- how about pointing that out?" Van Hollen told The New York Times on Tuesday. "It's important that they more clearly distinguish between what Democrats in Washington stand for and what Republicans in Washington stand for."
It's an especially frustrating place for House Democrats, who have by and large been warriors for the president's agenda, casting tough votes on a variety of issues, including some, like the climate-change bill, that aren't likely to even be taken up by the Senate this year. After all that hard work, they rankle at what they see as the president's failure to present a choice to the electorate.
"We are Democrats, and one of the benefits of our party is that people are able to share their very strong feelings about these issues," White House Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton says of the debate. He is confident that voters will see a clear choice between the parties in November. But while the president has shown consistency in rebutting attacks on his own policies (recall the health-care debate), his support for Democrats in Congress has been focused on fundraising -- which, to be sure, is no small part of the effort.
"We've got a president who does a lot of things well," says a senior Democratic aide, who requested anonymity to discuss the issue. "Confrontation is not one of them. They are trying to figure out how to do that and protect the brand."
With six months until the election, the disagreement hasn't flared into a major obstacle to the party's political efforts. Both sides see the White House starting to make its presence felt, particularly during the debate on Wall Street reform, when he criticized Republican Leader Mitch McConnell in his weekly address. Congressional Democrats also praised the DNC -- indeed, Kaine has recently turned up the contrast, asking CNN's John King, "Do you want to keep climbing? Or do you want to hand the keys back to the guys who put us in the ditch?"
The real question for nervous congressional Democrats is whether Obama will amp up the partisanship over the coming summer and motivate the coalition that brought him and his party to victory two years ago. But there is the tension, dating back to the very start of the 2008 campaign, between the president's post-partisan idealism and his tenacious, organizing-focused political sense. Once again, Obama is being Obama, moving more slowly -- or, his allies say, with a broader vision -- than his colleagues, who simply want to know which Obama will show up to the midterm campaign.
"I'm just hoping they realize this before it's too late," the senior Democratic aide says. "Too late is 2011."
