Obama says Republicans would ‘cripple’ US

Pres­i­dent Barack Obama greets sup­port­ers after dis­em­bark­ing Air Force One at Boe­ing Field Sun­day, Sept. 25, 2011, in Seat­tle. (AP Photo/Joe Nicholson)

SEATTLE (AP) — Pres­i­dent Barack Obama took his newly com­bat­ive mes­sage to the lib­eral West Coast on Sun­day, aim­ing to re-energize faith­ful Demo­c­ra­tic vot­ers who have grown increas­ingly dis­en­chanted with him.

The three-day trip, end­ing Tues­day in Den­ver, comes as Obama has shifted from seek­ing com­pro­mise with Repub­li­cans in Con­gress to call­ing out House Speaker John Boehner and oth­ers by name. The pres­i­dent has crit­i­cized them as obstruc­tion­ists and demanded their help in pass­ing his $447 bil­lion jobs bill.

This approach is a relief to Demo­c­ra­tic activists fed up by what they viewed as the president’s ced­ing of ground to the Repub­li­cans on tax cuts and other issues when the econ­omy has stalled and unem­ploy­ment is stuck above 9 percent.

Obama’s three-day trip offers him the chance to try to reas­sure some of his most lib­eral and deep-pocketed sup­port­ers with his aggres­sive new mes­sage as the 2012 cam­paign revs up.

At his first fundraiser in Seat­tle, Obama mixed frontal attacks on Repub­li­cans with words of encour­age­ment intended to buck up the faith­ful as the 2012 cam­paign revs up.

“From the moment I took office what we’ve seen is a con­stant ide­o­log­i­cal push­back against any kind of sen­si­ble reforms that would make our econ­omy work bet­ter and give peo­ple more oppor­tu­nity,” the pres­i­dent said at an inti­mate brunch fundraiser at the Med­ina, Wash­ing­ton state., home of for­mer Microsoft exec­u­tive Jon Shirley.

About 65 guests were pay­ing $35,800 per cou­ple to lis­ten to Obama at the first of seven fundrais­ers he was hold­ing from Seat­tle to Hol­ly­wood to San Diego on Sun­day and Monday.

Obama said 2012 would be an espe­cially tough elec­tion because peo­ple are dis­cour­aged and dis­il­lu­sioned with gov­ern­ment, but he also said he was deter­mined because so much is at stake.

The Repub­li­can alter­na­tive, Obama said, is “an approach to gov­ern­ment that will fun­da­men­tally crip­ple Amer­ica in meet­ing the chal­lenges of the 21st century.”

Obama got a friendly wel­come from invited guests at his first stop. But else­where lib­eral activists were mak­ing plans to greet the pres­i­dent with demon­stra­tions crit­i­ciz­ing his poli­cies or remind­ing him they want him to do more.

“We want to see Obama stand up as strongly as he can to fight for the peo­ple of this coun­try who are work­ing out there to make ends meet,” said Kathy Cum­mings, com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor for the Wash­ing­ton State Labor Coun­cil. The coun­cil was help­ing orga­nize a demon­stra­tion out­side Seattle’s Para­mount The­ater, the site of an Obama fundraiser later Sunday.

On Sat­ur­day night, Obama tried to shore up sup­port among a key Demo­c­ra­tic con­stituency when he spoke at the annual awards din­ner of the Con­gres­sional Black Cau­cus in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., say­ing pas­sage of his jobs plan would help African-Americans,

Black con­gres­sional lead­ers remain fiercely pro­tec­tive of the first African-American pres­i­dent, but in recent weeks they’ve been increas­ingly vocal in their dis­con­tent — espe­cially over black unem­ploy­ment, which is nearly dou­ble the national aver­age at 16.7 percent.

He acknowl­edged blacks have suf­fered might­ily because of the reces­sion, and are frus­trated that the down­turn is tak­ing so long to reverse. “So many peo­ple are still hurt­ing. So many peo­ple are barely hang­ing on,” he said, then added: “And so many peo­ple in this city are fight­ing us every step of the way.”

But Obama said blacks know all too well from the civil rights strug­gle that the fight for what is right is never easy.

“Take off your bed­room slip­pers. Put on your march­ing shoes,” he said, his voice ris­ing as applause and cheers mounted. “Shake it off. Stop com­plainin’. Stop grum­blin’. Stop cryin’. We are going to press on. We have work to do.”

Obama and the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates are work­ing over­time to raise cam­paign cash ahead of an impor­tant Sept. 30 report­ing dead­line that will give a snap­shot of their finan­cial strength. Obama’s West Coast visit was heavy on fundrais­ers: two each in Seat­tle and the San Fran­cisco area Sun­day, fol­lowed by one in San Diego on Mon­day and two in Los Angeles.

He’s meet­ing with the Sil­i­con Val­ley and Hol­ly­wood elite, includ­ing an event Sun­day night in Ather­ton, Cal­i­for­nia, at the home of Face­book chief oper­at­ing offi­cer Sheryl Sandberg.

The expected haul from all seven events: $4 mil­lion or more.

In addi­tion to the fundrais­ing, Obama sched­uled a town hall-style event Mon­day in California’s Sil­i­con Val­ley, hosted by the social net­work­ing com­pany LinkedIn. The trip ends Tues­day with a speech to sup­port­ers in Den­ver, where he accepted the Demo­c­ra­tic nom­i­na­tion three years ago.

Obama was push­ing through­out for his job pro­posal, which com­bines tax cuts, unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits and pub­lic works spend­ing. The bill faces a hos­tile recep­tion on Capi­tol Hill, par­tic­u­larly because Obama wants to pay for it with tax increases on wealthy Amer­i­cans and cor­po­ra­tions opposed by Republicans.

A top aide, David Plouffe, said the White House expects a vote in the Democratic-controlled Sen­ate in Octo­ber. “I think it’s got a very good chance” of pass­ing, despite reser­va­tions even from some in the president’s own party, he told ABC television’s “This Week.”

If he can’t per­suade Con­gress to pass the bill, Obama has said he wants to make sure the pub­lic knows who’s stand­ing in the way.

Jobs are a major con­cern in Cal­i­for­nia, where unem­ploy­ment stands at 12.1 per­cent, high­est of any state except Nevada.

Mark DiCamillo, direc­tor of California’s Field Poll, said that’s con­tributed to a soft­en­ing of sup­port for Obama among Demo­c­ra­tic and inde­pen­dent vot­ers. Obama’s job approval rat­ing dropped to 46 per­cent among Cal­i­for­ni­ans in a Field Poll this month. Among Democ­rats it was 69 per­cent, but that was down 10 per­cent­age points from June.

“Cal­i­for­ni­ans voted for him by 24 points in 2008 and the Democ­rats and non­par­ti­sans were the back­bone of his sup­port and he’s los­ing some of that now,” DiCamillo said. “I think there’s a lot of frus­tra­tion in Cal­i­for­nia about Wash­ing­ton. … They’re look­ing for Obama to do something.”

The summer’s nasty debate over rais­ing the government’s bor­row­ing limit turned off vot­ers. Many lib­er­als bemoaned the deal that cleared the way for a higher debt ceil­ing, with Obama agree­ing to Repub­li­can demands for steep bud­get cuts with­out new taxes.

But Demo­c­ra­tic sup­port­ers are heart­ened by the jobs plan and Obama’s insis­tence that Con­gress must raise taxes to pay for it. Now they’re hop­ing that the con­fronta­tional Obama they’re see­ing now is the same one they’ll see through the 2012 campaign.

“We wish that his fight­ing spirit had been there a few months ago, but it’s here now,” said Rick Jacobs, head of the Courage Cam­paign, a pro­gres­sive online orga­niz­ing net­work in California.

Posted by AP News on Sep 25 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.