Obama: 'More fights' ahead

ELYRIA, Ohio

President Obama tried to revive his battered agenda and rally despondent Democrats yesterday with a renewed emphasis on jobs. His visit to this struggling Rust Belt city capped a tough first-anniversary week for a presidency that suffered jolts at the hands of Massachusetts voters and the Supreme Court.

"I'm not going to win every round," Obama told a town-hall audience. But, striking a populist tone on a campaign-style swing, he pledged, "I can promise you there will be more fights in the days ahead."

He used the word "fight" or some variation numerous times as he tried out a revamped message focused mainly on the economy, part of a stepped-up effort to convince Americans that he's doing all he can to create jobs.

"This isn't about me. This is about you," he said.

Although he has recently voiced a willingness to find common ground in the divisive health-care debate, he insisted that he is not ready to abandon the cause or to drop his environmental and energy agenda even with the strengthened Republican hand in the Senate.

"There are things that have to be done," he said. "And that means marching forward, not standing still." He acknowledged "we had a little bit of a buzz saw" on health-care overhaul.

Even as Obama tried to bring the public and nervous Democrats back on board, a leading member of his party suggested that Congress slow its pace on health care, a sign of eroding political will in the wake of Tuesday's Republican election upset in Massachusetts.

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who ushered the overhaul legislation through the Senate's health committee last year after the death of his friend Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said that Obama and Congress could "maybe take a breather for a month, six weeks."

"Maybe we do need to take this time. Look, it didn't work, this process," Dodd said, adding that Obama's leadership was needed to get things back on track.

The past week was one of the worst in recent times for the White House, with much hand-wringing and blame-casting among dazed Democrats in the halls of Congress.

The week brought two major shifts to the political landscape.

Little-known Republican Scott Brown's seizing of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for decades by Kennedy cost Democrats their filibuster-proof supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate and seriously threatened Obama's entire domestic agenda. It means that Republicans will be able to stop or seriously slow legislation at will.

The GOP victory was also a poor omen for November's midterms, continuing a trend that began with Democratic losses in November in campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey. Also, a succession of Democratic legislators have decided to retire rather than face voters this year.

Thursday's Supreme Court ruling overturning limits on corporate political spending opened the way for businesses and special-interest groups to spend money freely on commercials for or against individual candidates.

The opinion could have an impact on this fall's races that could disproportionately work to the disadvantage of Democrats.

Although the ruling also opened the way for unions to spend directly on campaign commercials, union membership has been steadily falling. It's down from its peak of about 35 percent of workers in the 1950s to 12.3 percent in 2009, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said yesterday.

Republicans sought to capitalize on their Massachusetts windfall by stepping up their attacks on Obama and congressional Democrats.

The House minority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said that his home state "is desperate for a plan to put Americans back to work." But he claimed that Obama's health-care and climate-change proposals would destroy jobs.

Buoyed congressional Republicans have their sights on winning back majority control they lost in 2006, seeing potential gains in Ohio, Michigan, New York and Arkansas.

Obama last came to this northeastern Ohio county in 2008 for a campaign speech on the economy at a drywall factory that closed two months later.

Obama told his audience at the Lorain County Community College that a new stimulus spending bill emerging in Congress -- the White House is calling it a "jobs" bill -- must include tax breaks for small business hiring and for people trying to make their homes more energy efficient -- two proposals he wasn't able to get into a bill the House passed last month.