Team Obama Makes Case Against Republican Obstruction

Team Obama is finally giving up on the naive goal of bipartisanship. David Axelrod made the case to Candy Crowley that Republicans are sabotaging the economy in order to make President Barack Obama a one-term president.

I think this is something — something different going on right now. When you have the leader — the Republican leader of the Senate say, our number one goal — in the midst of this economy, our number one goal is to defeat the president, and they’re acting like it.

They don’t want to cooperate. They don’t want to help. Even on measures to help the economy that they traditionally have supported before, like a payroll tax cut, like infrastructure, rebuilding our roads and bridges and surface transport. These — so you have to ask a question, are they willing to tear down the economy in order to tear down the president or are they going to cooperate?

And, listen, there’s a reason why the Congress is at nine percent in some polls, approval, lowest in history. Because this is different than we’ve ever seen before.

Mitch McConnell said that the economy was not the Republican Party's number one goal.

"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

This is the narrative that Obama's political team needs to keep driving home. Obama must hold Republicans accountable for their obstruction.

David Axelrod Memo

President Barack Obama's political adviser David Axelrod sent out a memo to Democrats advocating for the passage of the American Jobs Act. The memo is preaching to the choir. That isn't a bad thing.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has created an opening for the Obama administration to push the jobs bill. The bill wasn't going to pass with Obama failing again at bipartisanship. The only slim chance this bill has of passing is if Republicans fear for their political survival. Republicans that vote against the bill will be labeled by Obama and the DNC as placing tax cuts for the rich above job creation.

David Axelrod Memo

Axelrod Out, Plouffe In

I take this as a good piece of news. David Axelrod is leaving the White House. The political strategy and messaging of the Obama administration has been a disaster. I don't blame that entirely on Axelrod. A New Republic reports that Axelrod has become increasingly frustrated with the direction Team Obama has been going. Axelrod can best serve Obama by laying the groundwork for Obama's 2012 campaign.

The good news is David Plouffe is taking over Axelrod's job. Plouffe was Obama's presidential campaign manager. Plouffe didn't join the White House team because he had a child. Plouffe has advised Obama without holding an official White House role. James Carville had a similar working relationship with the Clinton administration.

Plouffe is the best hope Obama has to get his political strategy back on track. Plouffe carries more weight because he doesn't need the White House job. Plouffe can make vast sums of money as a consultant and on the lecture circuit. My hope is that Plouffe can get Obama out of neoliberal mode and reshape him back into the populist of 2008.

Quote of the Day

"Don't these people realize they have a man-crush on each other?"

David Axelrod, Senior Advisor, on why rumors of President Obama firing Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner are false.

White House v. Fox News

White House senior adviser David Axelrod told George Stephanopoulos Fox News is not really a news network. The Daily Show has successfully made that point for several years.

It's really not news. It's pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we're not going to treat them that way. We're going to appear on their shows. We're going to participate but understanding that they represent a point of view."

The White House attack on Fox News has forced the network to make laughable arguments about how tough they were on President George W. Bush. Brit Hume and Bill O'Reilly claim the network held Bush accountable for mistakes in Iraq.

"I haven't seen any evidence of GOP intrusion," O'Reilly said.

What about Fox News passing Senate Republican Communications Center talking points as actual reporting? How about Fox News saying, "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" Fox News does not do investigative journalism. The running joke is the network worker bees marched to John Moody's orders.

From: John Moody
Date: 4/6/2004

The events in Iraq Tuesday are going to be the top story, unless and until something else (or worse) happens. Err on the side of doing too much Iraq rather than not enough. Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there? The US is in Iraq to help a country brutalized for 30 years protect the gains made by Operation Iraqi Freedom and set it on the path to democracy. Some people in Iraq don't want that to happen. That is why American GIs are dying. And what we should remind our viewers.

MoveOn.org is running a petition asking Democrats to stay off Fox News.

The Obama Campaign Team

60 Minutes interviews Barack Obama campaign staffers David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Robert Gibbs and Anita Dunn about their historic campaign.