"The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall," a presidential adviser said. "The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, 'At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.'" […]
[T]he president's advisers plan to spin it as a validation of the underdog arguments that fueled Obama's insurgent candidacy.
"The painstaking campaign for change over two years in 2007 and 2008 has become a painstaking effort in the White House, too," the official said. "The old habits of Washington aren't going away easy."
The White House rallying cry, according to one Obama confidant, will be, "Buckle up — let's get some stuff done."
That stray "some" is a slogan-killer for me; the sparser let's-get-stuff-done has a winning staccato intensity. Though, unsurprisingly for this White House, the motto would be something close to the opposite of what is more likely to happen: Weakened Democrats proposing various unpopular "reforms" (from cap-and-trade on down); then when the bills fail, blaming it all on do-nothing Republicans. All while having the gnads to claim, after a full season of too-big-to-fail bailouts, that only Democrats are on the side of the lil' fella versus the fatcats:
In his weekly address on Saturday, [Obama] declared: "We're not going to let Wall Street take the money and run." Saluting Martin Luther King Jr. in remarks to a Baptist congregation the next day, Obama railed against "an era of greed and irresponsibility that sowed the seeds of its own demise."
At the rally for Coakley, he added: "Bankers don't need another vote in the United States Senate. They've got plenty."
White House senior adviser David Axelrod told reporters that Democrats will not allow the midterm elections to become "a referendum on this administration" but, instead, will force Republicans to defend the role they have played in the economic crisis.
And press secretary Robert Gibbs said a key theme of 2010 will be asking voters "whether the people they have in Washington are on the side of protecting the big banks, whether they're on the side of protecting the big oil companies, whether they're on the side of protecting insurance companies or whether they're on the people's side."
