Wounded Dems urge new focus on creating jobs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wounded in Massachusetts, frustrated Democrats on Wednesday urged the White House to focus on jobs and the economy — not the health-care overhaul that’s now at risk — and pressed President Barack Obama to more forcefully make their case against Republicans ahead of potentially disastrous elections this fall.

On the day after the improbable Senate election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama and his Democratic Party raced to re-evaluate their midterm election strategy, adjust their health care approach and assuage an angry electorate. The embarrassing defeat to the GOP in a Democratic stronghold was a bitter end to the president’s first year in office, and it triggered furious party soul-searching.

“I would like the Democratic Party as a whole including its leader, the president, to speak clearly about the differences and to define those differences,” Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Democrats’ campaign effort, told The Associated Press. And it’s not just about Republicans and Democrats, he said: “We have to do a much better job of both engaging and delivering to independent voters.”

Obama himself owned up to a failure to communicate.

In a year of hopping from crisis to crisis, he told ABC News, “we lost some of that sense of speaking directly to the American people about what their core values are and why we have to make sure those institutions are matching up with those values.”

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., put it more simply, assessing the message Massachusetts sent. “Economy, economy, economy,” she said.

“We need a jobs bill. We need short-term, focused strategies to create jobs, real fast,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. “If the dominant message isn’t about jobs and spending, we’ll be making a difficult challenge exponentially more difficult.”

At the Capitol, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., declared, “If there’s anybody in this building that doesn’t tell you they are more worried about elections today, you should absolutely slap them.”

Indeed, there was a grim sense among Democrats that if the GOP could win in a traditionally deeply liberal state, Massachusetts, it could probably win anywhere.

Said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.: “Every state is now in play.”

Democrats still have majority control of both the House and Senate. But Tuesday’s GOP upset for the seat long held by the Sen. Edward Kennedy — after Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey last fall for Democratic-held gubernatorial seats — was a sign of serious trouble this fall. Even when the economy is strong, the party holding the White House historically loses seats in midterms.

Despite the loss that gave Republicans a 41st vote in the 100-seat Senate, neither Democrats nor most Republicans said they thought control of Congress could be up for grabs. But both parties expect big Republican gains, and fewer Democratic seats would make it more difficult for Obama to pass his agenda.

“I’m not under any illusion that we can take anything for granted. We have to fight,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass.

On the anniversary of his inauguration, Obama faced a need to reevaluate both his policy — specifically his endangered health care plan — and his politics in a White House stunned by a shift in the mood of the electorate from just a year earlier. Voters were hopeful and supportive then. They are cranky and belligerent now. Of utmost concern: independent voters who have fled to the GOP after a year of Wall Street bailouts, enormous budget deficits and partisan wrangling over health care.

“The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years,” Obama told ABC in an interview.