By JACKIE CALMES
c.2010 New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON - Democrats are entering the fall sprint to the midterm elections lacking a unifying message to address the lackluster economy, scrambling to come up with further job-creating remedies and out of time to show substantial results before voters go to the polls.
The monthly jobs report Friday, while better than economists had expected, did nothing to improve the deteriorating political climate for Democrats a little more than eight weeks before Election Day.
President Barack Obama, after a week consumed by foreign policy issues, will begin focusing publicly on the economy next week and Wednesday plans to propose modest additional tax breaks, temporary and aimed at small business to promote hiring. But it is not clear that he has the votes or the time in Congress to pass them, with Republicans eager to deny Democrats any victories and endangered Democrats eager to get home within three to four weeks to campaign.
Democrats' sense of vulnerability has increased since Congress broke for August, after a month of reports tracking weakness in both the economy and their polls. One result is that they now split more deeply than ever on the issue that in recent elections had been a unifying rallying cry: ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. Democratic leaders are imploring Obama to come off the sidelines and lead the fight.
On the campaign trail, many Democrats are going their own ways as they face the prospect that the persistently high unemployment rate could cost them control of the House and perhaps the Senate. Many are embracing the stimulus package enacted soon after Obama took office; others run away from it. Some distance themselves from Obama and his economic team; most blame Republicans.
Democrats' campaign message mostly is a Babel of individual voices. With the national winds blowing ever stronger against the party in power, threatened Democrats are tailoring their message to their particular district or state - with party leaders' encouragement.
Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Va., an underdog for re-election from a conservative district, campaigned this week in a county where he pointed to new water lines and broadband service as the benefits of the stimulus measures, which in turn helped attract Microsoft to invest in the tobacco region.
"If it's Perriello versus Hurt, I'll win," Perriello said, referring to his Republican challenger, State Sen. Robert Hurt. "If it's a referendum on the president, it's a tougher race."
Perriello could not immediately answer when asked what the national Democratic message is.
"I suppose the pause there may be telling," he said.
"But if there is one theme," he added, employing a metaphor Obama has used repeatedly, "it's that the other side drove the economy into the ditch and they haven't changed their driving habits at all. And we've worked really hard to get us out of the ditch."
Seeking to keep the focus away from Obama and the national economy, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona emphasizes her work for tougher border controls and support for the stimulus money that saved the jobs of local teachers and public-safety workers. Like many Democrats, her campaign depicts her Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, as an extremist conservative for his views on Medicare, taxes and other issues.
"We're running our own race," said Rodd McLeod, the campaign manager for Giffords.
Obama spoke Thursday with the House speaker, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, who is fighting for survival in Nevada, to coordinate on proposals Democrats can unite around quickly.
Yet Obama and Reid have not been able to overcome Republican opposition to a package of tax cuts and lending assistance for small businesses that Obama proposed as the year began.
Among the ideas favored within the administration are tax incentives for clean energy jobs and credits for employers who increase their work forces. The president and his team have ruled out a broad-based payroll tax holiday to promote hiring, officials say.
But they are still considering whether to propose making permanent a tax credit for businesses' research and development expenses; for three decades the costly credit has been repeatedly renewed rather than made permanent so the revenue loss does not show up in long-term deficit projections.
Democrats say the list of stimulus ideas is mostly tax cuts because spending proposals would have no chance of Republican support. Yet Republicans have opposed Democrats' tax cutting ideas as well, so some Democrats argue that the new ideas could further demoralize party liberals, who want new spending for job-creating public works.
Administration and congressional Democrats are considering proposing perhaps $35 billion in additional tax breaks for small businesses.
That sum is roughly the amount that would be saved in 2011 if the Bush income tax rates for upper-income people - couples with more than $250,000 in taxable income and individuals with more than $200,000 - revert to the higher, pre-2001 levels next year, as the tax laws require.
Democrats say such a package would let them counter Republicans' argument that successful small businesses would be hurt by letting the top Bush tax rates expire. And, Democrats add, their alternative tax cuts would be ones that economists consider more likely to lift the economy.
What is really needed, they say, is for Obama to get more engaged in the fight to end the tax cuts for the wealthy. Yet the combination of a weakened economy and weaker candidates has scrambled the strategy planning.
Before August, Democrats generally were united in opposing any extension for the top rates and looked forward to a pre-election battle with Republicans. The chief debate has been over whether to make the middle-class tax rates permanent or to extend them for a year given the revenue loss of about $3 trillion over a decade.
Now Democrats are weighing whether they may have to accept a one-year extension of the tax rates for the wealthy. More Democratic lawmakers now fear attacks from Republicans, who argue that no one should pay higher taxes, certainly not before the economy recovers fully.
Democrats assume that Senate Republicans will block any extension that does not include the top rates. In that event, Democratic leaders are ready with their attack lines.
As Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the chairman of the House Democrats' campaign committee, put it, "They're holding tax relief for 98 percent of the American people hostage to permanent tax cuts for the top 2 percent."