Obama will try to lay out his economic vision again Thursday in Cleveland. Dems want Obama message change

Six months ago, President Barack Obama flew to Osawatomie, Kan., to give a speech embracing “a fair shot” for all Americans.

Thursday, he’ll head to Cleveland for another speech, trying to lay out his economic vision again.


The big campaign speech is the latest attempt to get people talking about the president’s message. The problem is, more and more Democrats say that message isn’t working.

Twenty years after James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid,” he and pollsters Stanley Greenberg and Erica Seifert have put on paper what many in their party have been privately grumbling about for months: It’s still the economy, stupid. And, they say, Obama talking about how a lousy economy is getting better isn’t doing him any favors with the American people or moving him closer to victory in November.

( Also on POLITICO: Report: Obama wants more time for economy fix)

“These voters are not convinced that we are headed in the right direction. They are living in a new economy — and there is no conceivable recovery in the year ahead that will change the view of the new state of the country,” the memo reads. “They actually have a very realistic view of the long road back and the struggles of the middle class — and the current narrative about progress just misses the opportunity to connect and point forward.”

Household net worth has dropped to the lowest levels in 20 years. Adjusted for inflation, wages have been flat since Obama took office. And a disappointing May jobs report signaled things might be getting worse.

Meanwhile, the Buffett rule is dead. Obama’s jobs bill mostly went nowhere. Things don’t look so hot for student loan subsidies, either.

That leaves Obama with a message that’s hardly the stuff rallying cries are made of: Romney doesn’t want to help you — I do, I just haven’t been able to.

“The good news is, the American people generally agree with our vision,” Obama said Tuesday at a fundraiser in the Baltimore suburbs. “If you just put in front of them, issue after issue and you present the Democratic approach and the Republican approach, we win. The challenge is because folks are still hurting right now, the other side feels that it’s enough for them to just sit back and say, ‘Things aren’t as good as they should be and it’s Obama’s fault.’ And, you can pretty much put their campaign on, on a tweet, and have some characters to spare.”

A few hours later, Obama launched into a passionate campaign speech that included an extended attack on Romney’s economic proposals. “There’s nothing new about these ideas,” the president said. “It’s like somebody goes to a restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, a martini, all that stuff, then, just as you’re sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab.”

Then Obama summarized his own message.

“If people ask you, ‘What’s this campaign about?’ You tell them it’s still about hope. You tell them it’s still about change. You still tell them it’s still about ordinary people who believe that in the face of great odds, we can still make a difference in the life of this country. I still believe that,” Obama said.

Then he reached back even further, to the 2004 convention speech that first made him a star.

“I believe this country is not as divided as our politics suggests. We have more in common than the pundits tell us. I believe we’re not Democrats or Republicans first, we’re Americans first. Most of all I still believe in you,” Obama said, “and I want you to keep believing in me.”

That line got the crowd going in a “four more years” chant. But there weren’t enough people in the room to change the trends, or the Gallup Poll out Tuesday showing economic confidence is down again after hitting a four-year high just two weeks ago — with most of the decline due to Democrats souring on their prospects. And a few fiery speeches won’t be enough to change the trajectory of a message that even Obama supporters worry is falling apart.

“At some point, it’s hard to spin your way out of a trash heap,” said Drew Westen, an Emory University clinical psychologist who studies the role of messaging and emotion in politics.

Obama’s “fundamental error,” Westen said, was not blaming former President George W. Bush and conservative lawmakers early enough and often enough in his term for creating the country’s economic troubles before he got into office.

“It’s too late to make that argument now,” said Westen, who has consulted with House and Senate Democrats on messaging on health care and energy issues. “It just sounds like sour grapes. Whether it’s true or not, it sounds like sour grapes.”

The same goes for trying to get the public to bite on the president’s recent economic proposals, including helping underwater homeowners with reductions in their mortgage principal.

“It’s too late for that,” Westen said. “Those were actions that should have been taken in the first two years of the president’s term when [Democrats] had the House and Senate.”

But Obama isn’t even selling well the victories he has scored, most notably the automobile industry bailout, said Greg Haas, a Columbus-based political consultant who co-ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 Ohio campaign.

“They’ve got to make that penetrate and really articulate what they did, what the payoff was,” Haas said. “And right now there’s actually more coming from the other side in terms of framing that argument. If that happens, they can’t win.”

That’s a thought echoed by the Carville-Greenberg-Seifert memo, which said that focus groups conducted late last month with Ohio and Pennsylvania swing voters showed how stark the situation is.

“We will face an impossible economic headwind in November if we do not move to a new narrative, one that contextualizes the recovery but, more importantly, focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class,” they wrote.

The Romney campaign, a bit more gleefully, has also hammered the Obama campaign for its message confusion.

“President Obama doesn’t have a message. He can’t run on his abysmal economic record, so there is no rationale for his candidacy,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said.

But the Obama campaign pushed back on reading too much into the memo — the pollsters describe the focus groups as “open ended” discussions that immediately turned to people voicing their complaints about the economy. “Greenberg didn’t test our actual message,” said an Obama campaign aide.

Jared Bernstein, a former top economist for Vice President Joe Biden, pushed back — to some extent.

There is a coherent message about private sector recovery, Bernstein said, but that’s not enough. The combination of the European crisis — which Obama tried to focus on Friday before his “private sector is doing fine” comment consumed the narrative — and the ramp-up of the campaign have primed voters to listen to what he’s trying to say, and the contrast he’s trying to draw.

“I think people are absolutely ready for basically a two-part discussion. The first part is, ‘What are you going to do, Mr. President?’ And the second part is, ‘Why are your ideas any better than the other guy’s?’” Bernstein said.

“This is not the time for some shiny new idea for him to fight with Congress about,” he said. “This is the time for him to explain to the American people how he understands the workings of the economy.”

Democratic strategist Phil Singer, who worked as Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign spokesman, said he doesn’t buy the memo’s conclusion. But he’s not surprised to see the anxiety starting to mount.

“No Democratic campaign would be complete without some hand-wringing over its message from the party’s luminaries,” said Singer. “It’s just happening a little earlier than usual now.”