DNC Chair uses debate moment to pounce on GOP

CNN // Shannon Travis
The woman working to ensure President Obama’s re-election entered the political equivalent of the lion’s den – and pounced on a debate moment to blast the Republican presidential candidates late Monday. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz stood in the “spin room” at the Florida State Fair Grounds in Tampa following the Republican Tea Party Debate broadcast by CNN and countered the Republican candidates’ slams of President Obama with some aimed back at them.

With Doubts, Voters Prefer Obama Jobs Plan
National Journal // Ron Brownstein
Despite deepening doubts about President Obama’s economic agenda, Americans generally prefer the proposals he offered last week for reviving the economy to the competing ideas advanced by congressional Republicans and the GOP’s 2012 presidential field, a United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll has found. The poll suggests Americans remain unconvinced that either party’s agenda can significantly dent the nation’s longest period of sustained unemployment since the Depression. The share of Americans who said that Obama’s policies have compounded economic difficulties was nearly double the portion who said he has improved conditions.

DNC campaigns for Obama jobs plan
Politico // Tim Mak
The Democratic National Committee is launching a new ad campaign Monday to build public pressure on Congress to back President Barack Obama’s job plan. The television spots feature clips from Obama’s jobs speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday evening. “The next election is fourteen months away. And the people who sent us here, the people who hired us to work for them – they don’t have the luxury of waiting fourteen months… Members of Congress, it is time for us to meet our responsibilities,” Obama says in the clip

Why the Perry-Romney Slugfest Plays Right Into Obama’s Hands
The New Republic // Ed Kilgore
But if all these implications of the Romney-Perry clash are reasonably clear, there is a more subtle but possibly even more significant additional consequence of Republicans arguing over whether to demolish or merely slash Social Security and Medicare: It will materially aid Barack Obama’s high-stakes effort to make the 2012 presidential election a choice between two very different visions of American government, rather than a referendum on his administration and its handling of the economy.

Poll: Don’t blame Barack Obama
Politico // MJ Lee
Despite his record-low approval ratings, not all unhappy Americans blame President Barack Obama for the problems in Washington. According to a new Bloomberg National Poll released Thursday, 45 percent of those surveyed said they blame Republicans on Capitol Hill for the problems inside the Beltway, while 39 percent said they believe the fault is with Obama or Democrats in Congress. More than a third of those surveyed said they “wish” Obama and the GOP in Congress would compromise — 28 percent said they are “frustrated” by the fighting in Washington, while more than a quarter said they are “angry and want to throw them all out.”

GOP Ties House Wins to President’s Woes
Wall Street Journal // Naftali Bendavid
Decisive Republican wins Tuesday in two House races have Democrats increasingly worried they will face problems in the 2012 elections if the economy and President Barack Obama’s job approval rating don’t improve significantly. Off-cycle elections often have their own dynamics that say little about national trends. But strategists from both parties tied Mr. Obama’s shaky poll numbers to Tuesday’s victory by Republican Bob Turner in a traditionally Democratic New York City district, and to a 22-point win by GOP candidate Mark Amodei in Nevada.

Obama campaign targets Georgia, possibly Savannah, as key battleground
Savannah Morning News // Larry Peterson
President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is targeting Georgia for extra effort next year, state Democratic chairman Mike Berlon said. Back this week from meetings with Obama operatives in Chicago, Berlon said the Peach State has moved up a notch on their priority list. “There will be a lot of national attention focused in Georgia, starting in January,” he told local Democrats this week. The upgrade comes after Republicans swept every statewide office in 2010, and experts question whether Georgia is fertile ground for Obama.

Obama’s chance to bounce back
The Washington Post // Aaron Blake 
It hasn’t been a good month for President Obama, but beneath it all, the American people are still ready to hear him out when it comes to his jobs plan. And in fact, at first glance, they seem to like it. Two new polls show more Americans like the president’s jobs plan than dislike it. A CNN/Opinion Research poll shows 43 percent favor Obama’s jobs plan, while 35 percent oppose it. And Gallup shows an even wider gap, with 45 percent in favor and 32 percent opposed. With less than majority support, it’s hardly a resounding affirmation of the president’s policies, and much has yet to play out. But the numbers do show that the American people haven’t written off the president’s economic ideas, even as the economy has tanked.

Insurers fought Obama’s health overhaul, but now they aid coalition to sign up uninsured
The Associated Press
Betting that President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul withstands lawsuits and a Republican repeal drive, an unusual alliance of industry, health care and consumer groups Wednesday launched a campaign to lay the groundwork for signing up uninsured Americans. Called Enroll America, the group started its work a day after the Census Bureau reported that nearly 50 million people had no health insurance in 2010, the highest number since the statistic was first collected more than two decades ago.

Obama imitates Truman’s re-election campaign
The Daily Caller // Neil Munro
President Barack Obama took the next step on his road to a 1948-style run for re-election by declaring he is being stymied by a do-nothing Congress. “This Congress, they are accustomed to doing nothing, and they’re comfortable with doing nothing, and they keep on doing nothing,” he told roughly 30 supporters at the first of two D.C. fundraisers held on Thursday evening. That depiction of a do-nothing Congress, which is set to become a feature of his stump speech, echoes President Harry Truman’s come-from-behind 1948 race for the presidency, in which he railed at a Republican-led “do-nothing Congress.”

Don’t Sweat the Jewish Vote
Daily Beast // Eric Alterman
Here we go yet again. Democrats lost a heavily Jewish seat in Brooklyn and Queens that they’ve held for almost a century, and just as they have done now for over 30 years, neoconservatives are predicting an exodus of Jews away from the Democrats into the Republican party. Most enthusiastic on this point is former Bush administration official Dan Senior. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he insists that “New York’s special congressional election on Tuesday was the first electoral outcome directly affected by President Obama’s Israel policy,” and he blames this on the fact that the president has “a record of bad policies and anti-Israel rhetoric.” Actually, not true.