The administration will tiptoe to avoid declaring victory on the site too soon. | REUTERS Obama's goal: Avoid 'Mission Accomplished' moment

Here’s the scenario the Obama administration wants to avoid at all costs on Saturday: It declares the Obamacare website fixed, a bunch of cable news network anchors try to log on again on live TV, and they get more error messages.

And suddenly, everyone’s showing that clip of George W. Bush standing on the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of the “Mission Accomplished” banner.


But Democrats on Capitol Hill have their own nightmare scenario, too: The White House gives them nothing to brag about, no evidence that the site is actually better — just as some of the most vulnerable Democrats are getting ready to blast the administration if they’re not convinced it’s fixed.

( Understanding Obamacare: POLITICO’s guide to the ACA)

That leaves the administration with two jobs ahead of the deadline Saturday when the federal Obamacare enrollment website is supposed to be fixed — or at least useable for most Americans. They’ll tiptoe to avoid declaring victory on the site too soon, but still give those vulnerable Democrats something to seize.

There’s no way the administration could declare victory anyway, since it just suffered the embarrassment of another “what now?” announcement the day before Thanksgiving — the one-year delay of online enrollment for small businesses in federally run health insurance exchanges. Instead, it will just have to make the most of whatever improvements it can show in the enrollment website for individuals.

And yet, some Democrats aren’t even waiting for whatever scraps of progress the administration can give them — because as long as the website has been sputtering, they say they haven’t been able to brag about the Affordable Care Care benefits that are actually working, like better Medicare prescription drug coverage for seniors.

( PHOTOS: 10 Sebelius quotes about Obamacare website)

“The website should have been working for all consumers and small businesses on October 1. The fact that that didn’t happen is inexcusable,” said Rep. Carol Shea-Porter of New Hampshire, who’s expected to face one of the toughest House re-election races next year.

So what can President Barack Obama and other administration officials give those Democrats, especially the ones in close reelection races next year, while still stepping carefully around the “Mission Accomplished” trap? Expect to hear a few technical metrics of speed and lower error rates over and over again, plus one fuzzy broad theme: It’s better than it was.

“The website’s working continually better, so check it out,” Obama said Tuesday in a speech at DreamWorks Animation in California.

( PHOTOS: Senate’s Obamacare hearing)

That’s probably the best the White House can do in public, Democratic strategists say — but beyond that, there’s not much the administration can say to Democratic candidates that will give them confidence the site is really better.

The one thing that will give them that confidence would be reports from their constituents that they’re actually able to use the website, from beginning to end.

“I don’t think there are any assurances they can take from the administration that will be that helpful,” said one Democratic pollster who’s working on some of the top Senate races. “It needs to get better. It’s all about the results. There’s nothing that messaging or assurances can do at this point.”

The end-of-the-month goal for the site’s rebirth has always been a little vague, but Obama and top administration officials are now lowering the bar even more. And really, they don’t have to go back to the Bush administration for an example of a disastrous PR campaign. The administration itself launched a “Recovery Summer” campaign in summer 2010 to highlight the stimulus — only to give the Republicans fodder when the economy remained as sluggish as ever.

So there will be no victory celebration, no announcement that could even sound like it. Jeff Zients, the leader of the administration’s tech surge, insists the website will work smoothly for “the vast majority of Americans” by the end of November — but most of the promises aren’t even that specific anymore.

These days, they’re just saying the website is “getting better,” working “pretty well,” better than it was in October — anything that doesn’t suggest it’s all fixed.

“It’s actually starting to work pretty well now, and it’s going to be working even better in the coming weeks,” Obama said at a Democratic fundraiser in California on Monday.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told state and local leaders in a conference call Tuesday that the site is “currently working much better” and that “we are definitely on track to have a significantly different user experience by the end of this month.”

Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for CMS, even declared this week that Saturday is “not a magical date.”

Want specifics? Administration officials say they’ve been giving Hill Democrats, and Republicans, the same metrics in briefings that they’ve been giving to the rest of the public. By Saturday, they say the site should be able to handle 50,000 users at the same time — the number it was supposed to handle when it launched.

They’re also focusing on loading times and errors rates. The loading time for each web page, they say, is now less than a second — it was as high as eight seconds on Oct. 1. And the error rates are now down to less than 1 percent per page, down from 6 percent per page at launch.

Just don’t try to use it when, you know, other people are using it. The administration wants to make sure people don’t break the website again by logging in all at once — so Bataille encouraged them to wait until “off-peak hours, such as mornings, evenings, or weekends.”

Most Democrats aren’t going to celebrate those metrics. For the most part, the ones in close races have declined to comment on what kind of evidence of progress they’d like — because they don’t want to commit to measures beyond the ones the administration is giving them.

But Democratic strategists warn that, whatever venting the candidates want to do about all the website problems, they need to circle back to a positive message about making the Affordable Care Act work better.

“It’s OK and probably important for Democrats to show some frustration with the issues ACA has had. But the most important thing for Democrats is to [show they’re] trying to make it work as well as possible,” said Bill Burton, a former Obama spokesman who has also worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Paul Begala, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, says Democrats could even turn the website repair work into a chance to hold events re-introducing the site — if it actually works.

“The administration has put a lot of chips on the table. November 30 is the day they have to show their cards. If it comes up blackjack, Democrats will celebrate,” Begala said. “I would have town meetings where I logged onto the website live. I would have constituents bring their laptops and walk them through how to comparison shop.”

On the surface, the website does seem significantly faster and less error-prone than it was when it launched — although not error-free.

A POLITICO reporter testing the site this week got all the way through to file a simple, no-subsidy application in less than an hour, although there were still errors like a blank screen during an attempt to log back in. And the crucial next step, browsing for health plans, couldn’t happen because the application was still being processed. Other POLITICO reporters who tested the site on Monday encountered more error messages, and later confirmed that the applications system was down for an hour.

The bigger issue, though, is that even if the site is faster and better on the front end, insurers say they’re still finding a lot of mistakes on the back end — the transmittal of accurate enrollment information from the website to insurers. Administration officials say they’re still working on that part and it’s a top priority, but insurers say they’re still finding that some enrollment records are duplicates while others aren’t getting through at all.

“The enrollment process has to work end to end” for consumers to actually get their health coverage, said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main trade group for insurers. “If it’s working at the front end, but it’s not working at the back end, those enrollments can’t be processed.”

Some Democrats up for re-election next year have told Obama that he could build their confidence by appointing a replacement for Zients as soon as possible, since Zients is set to become the new director of the National Economic Council in January.

“Sustaining the steady management focus that this position has already brought to the project would go a long way toward earning back the trust jeopardized by last month’s deeply flawed rollout,” said the letter from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and six other senators.

And other Democrats say they’ve already lost crucial time because of the sloppy launch. Shea-Porter said the website breakdowns have already overshadowed good news about the law that could have gotten a lot more attention otherwise — like the 11,962 Medicare beneficiaries in New Hampshire who saved $807 each during the first 10 months of this year because of the law. “That’s real money to a lot of people,” she said.

It may be in some Democrats’ interest to keep up the tough questions about the poor rollout, even if Saturday does bring real signs of progress.

“There are people whose politics will put them in a very hard line position, regardless. I don’t think there’s a Democrat in the caucus who believes that the website gets fixed to the point of perfection — or to the standard that they have laid out,” said one Democratic operative.

But Democratic strategists say that, whatever failures the website launch has had, it’s important for them to stress that they still believe in the goals of the law — the same message Obama delivered at the California fundraiser.

“Poll after poll shows that far more Americans want it to work more than they want it repealed — Democrats just need to show that they’re trying to do just that,” said Burton, now an executive vice president at the Global Strategy Group. “The Republican problem is that their adherence to a strategy of sabotage is not a pathway to increasing support in any group.”

The Democrats’ problem, though, is that Americans still want it to work — and the last two months have shaken the faith of even committed Obamacare supporters that the administration has the competence to pull it off.

On Saturday, they’ll know pretty quickly if the Obama administration has won a second chance to make a first impression.