Obama Stumps for Creigh Deeds in Bellwether State of Virginia

President Obama held a campaign rally Thursday night in McLean, Va., to raise support for Creigh Deeds, the flailing Democratic candidate for governor of Virginia (Here is a rough video of Obama's speech).

Obama's campaigning on behalf of Deeds (and Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in his re-election bid in New Jersey) is crucial for the administration's agenda and Democrats in general. Obama won both Virginia and New Jersey by comfortable margins in 2008, yet Republican candidates are dominating both races less than a year later as economic and other voter concerns mount.

Nervous Democrats up for competitive re-elections in 2010 are eyeing the outcomes of these races to gauge the political clout Obama has left -- as Patricia Murphy pointed out, Obama's polling numbers are falling on his key agenda items. If Republicans win big in these two races this November, Virginia and New Jersey serve as bellwethers for that chipping away at moderate, Blue Dog Democratic support as 2010 approaches. However, if Obama's efforts pay off and Democrats win or close the gap, the White House can tout its continued political influence.

Instead of focusing on Virginia and Deeds, Obama used his campaign rally speech to touch on typical themes of unity, progress, and change, while defending his own record. Three lines were particularly revealing in this challenging, anxious time for the 6-month-old Obama administration.

Obama said: "We're going to make sure we don't have a southern Virginia and a northern Virginia, but that we have one commonwealth of Virginia." This line is nearly parallel to his famous line from the 2004 Democratic National Convention: "There isn't a red America, or a blue America, there's the United States of America." This rhetoric certainly helped Obama on the campaign trail, but he may be losing the public perception battle in key areas as the details of his agenda take shape. Argues one analysis from Fox News:

"Last November, Obama became the first Democratic presidential candidate to win Virginia in 40 years. But in his first six months in office, the president's poll numbers have dropped considerably among independents, who say they are disillusioned by his economic promises and angered by a health care reform bill they say defines him as a big-government spender.

'"He's become a double-edged sword in Virginia,' said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. 'The overall impression is that he's trying to do too much too quickly, and he's becoming identified with big spending and big government.'"

I'm eerily reminded of the classic, desperate warning from the McCain campaign TV ad: "Behind the fancy speeches, grand promises and TV specials, lies the truth." While voter skepticism and confusion over such a complex issue as health care or the economy is to be expected, it is crucial for the administration to adapt its communications prowess to selling more granular policy initiatives.

A second big line from the speech undercuts Obama's invocations of bipartisan unity by placing blame on his Republican predecessors. "When I walked in, we had a $1.3 trillion dollar deficit. That was gift-wrapped and waiting for me when I walked into the Oval Office," Obama said. This is true, but Obama also pledged to halve the deficit by 2013 during his campaign and is now working with a budget that could add twice as much to the deficit as Bush ever did.

A recent Rasmussen poll found that 54 percent of Americans still blame Bush for the nation's economic problems, but it also found that the number has been steadily declining since Obama was inaugurated. Bush cannot be a punching bag forever, and whether that time comes before the 2010 midterms or in 2012, the public is likely to stop responding to blame-shifting.

The final notable line references Obama's economic opposition: "I don't want the folks who created this mess to do a lot of talking. I just want them to get out of the way."

This has been a consistent theme for President Obama. He attempted to discredit the entire Republican Party by tying it to Rush Limbaugh, and it could be applied to health care as well given the new White House campaign requesting lists of Web sites that are spreading "misinformation" about reform and the labeling of health care town hall protestors as anti-Obama "mobs." Yet nearly half of the country opposes Obama's health care plan, and a plurality of Americans (43 percent) would rather have Republicans in control of Congress. How far are these groups and their voices from the "folks" who should get out of the way?

Remarks like these exhibit a partisanship and hostility that contradict Obama's prior rhetoric of unity and cooperation. At the Deeds rally, Obama touched on both extremes in the same speech, and he's sure to bring them up again as contentious debates and campaigns drag on into the fall. How they are reconciled to a public still adjusting to the post-campaign realities of presidential politics should be of great concern for the new administration and its opponents.