http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=6277B87B-F4AB-4F50-B8B3E5193D6C09BBBy GLENN THRUSH & MANU RAJU | 11/19/10 4:28 AM EST Updated: 11/19/10 1:25 PM EST
Senate Democrats — including typically mild-mannered Bill Nelson of Florida — lit into President Barack Obama during an unusually tense air-clearing caucus session on Thursday, senators and staffers told POLITICO. Nelson told colleagues Obama’s unpopularity has become a serious liability for Democrats in his state and blamed the president for creating a toxic political environment for Democrats nationwide, according to two Democrats familiar with his remarks.
Several senators expressed the opinion that Obama needed to show more passion, while party liberals renewed their complaint that Obama should abandon the pretense of bipartisanship in the face of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s intransigence and what they consider the Kentucky Republican’s blatantly political tactics aimed at making Obama a one-term president.
Others said Democratic leaders need to clearly spell out what they believe are the motivations behind the Republicans' positions: that they are beholden to special interests, who bankroll their campaigns. If Democrats keep losing the message war, they worry, they will be wiped out in 2012.
snip
But the complaints are not new. Over the past year, Senate Democrats have expressed dissatisfaction with Obama’s policy priorities, especially his determination to ram through a health care bill against the objections of party conservatives like Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). The caucus’s left wing, including Vermont independent Bernie Sanders, have argued the opposite point: that Obama’s timidity has led to the defection of liberals and young people turned off by Obama compromises on the public option and economic stimulus.
Sherrod Brown confirmed to the
Washington Post's Greg Sargent that the Senate Democrats are clearly unhappy with Obama, though Brown declined to comment directly about the Politico report:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/11/sherrod_brown_obama_needs_to_s.htmlPosted at 4:10 PM ET, 11/19/2010
Sherrod Brown: Obama needs to fight harder and "sharpen message"By Greg Sargent
I chatted with Senator Sherrod Brown this afternoon, and he confirmed in unusually blunt terms that Senate Democrats are unhappy with President Obama over his failure to fight harder in order to draw a sharp distinction with Republicans on kitchen-table issues important to the middle class. "He needs to sharpen his message," Brown told me. "The president needs to make clear whose side we're on."
snip
Brown didn't comment directly on what happened at caucus, but he confirmed that the general sense among Senate Dems is that Obama needs to be more confrontational towards Republicans, in order to make the difference between the parties clearer. "The caucus broadly wants to see the president stand up and fight and make the distinction clearer than any of us have so far," Brown said.
Brown warned that reaching a compromise on extending the Bush tax cuts temporarily would only further set back Dem efforts to draw a sharp contrast with the GOP. "He needs to articulate every day that he's fighting for the broad middle class, while Republicans are for the rich," he said.
Brown also suggested it would be a setback to such efforts if Obama and Dems embrace cuts to Social Security and Medicare, as Obama's fiscal commission leaders have suggested. "The president has to make clear whose side we're on," Brown said. "The Republicans want to privatize Social Security and cut Medicare. Democrats are on the other side, advocating for the middle class. We need to affirmatively and strongly make that contrast."
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