Posts
David Axelrod, the president's senior adviser, said on MSNBC that the "main thing" coming out of the election results was a reminder that Obama and his party will be judged by whether people feel economically secure in the weeks and months ahead.
"The main thing that we saw in Massachusetts was the same sense of concern on the part of middle class folks about the economic situation, about their wages being stagnant, about their jobs being lost," he said. "That's something that we have to pay a great deal of attention to."
But although some lawmakers and pundits began predicting a full-scale retreat from the president's health-care reform effort, White House advisers said they were unwilling to accept defeat -- yet.
Top aides conceded that further health-care action in the Senate looks highly unlikely.
The loss of the 60th Democratic vote in the chamber, and the political shock for already wavering Democratic senators, will be too much, they said.
But, as they did at several moments of crisis during his campaign, Obama's closest advisers refused to express panic, and vowed to find a way to proceed with some version of health-care reform.
Axelrod called the current health-care system "a real crisis" that is "part of what middle-class people are struggling with. [Obama] believes we ought to deal with that crisis."He added: "It's not an option to simply walk away from a problem that's only going to get worse."
White House aides rejected the idea that the Massachusetts election was a referendum on Obama himself. The Democratic candidate was leading by double digits just weeks ago, an indication, they said, that the political environment set by the president was not dragging her down.
In a speech Tuesday at George Washington University, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe urged his former boss and Democrats in the Congress not to give up on health-care reform.
"If you run away from it, you're still going to get attacked," Plouffe predicted. In an appearance on MSNBC Wednesday, Plouffe went even further, saying that lawmakers should steel themselves, pass a health-care reform bill, and make their case to voters.
"We can cut and run, which I think will be devastating to the country," Plouffe said. "Or we can get this done, and instead of having a caricature of a health-care plan we can get it done and go out there and explain it."
"The positives of health care -- and there are many -- none of those things are really present right now," Plouffe said. "We've got to get this done so we can go out and have a campaign about this."Administration officials noted that the Senate is now at 59 Democratic votes -- just as it was one year ago.
At the same time, they said, the loss might give upcoming races across the country a jolt, awakening state parties to the perils of fielding weak candidates and giving national Democrats justification to weigh in on problematic campaigns. If there is a silver lining, they said, it is that no Democrats are now unaware of how endangered their majority is.
No comments:
Post a Comment