Obama’s Budget Revives Benefits as Divisive Issue

In the midterm races already taking shape, Democrats who back Mr. Obama’s budget proposals to trim future benefits as part of a long-term deficit-reduction compromise could be attacked from the left and the right.

Liberal groups and some union activists are threatening to recruit candidates to challenge these Democrats in their primaries. At the same time, the head of the House Republicans’ campaign committee gleefully signaled last week that he would use Mr. Obama’s “shocking attack on seniors” against Democrats in general-election races — though Republican Congressional leaders demanded the concessions from Mr. Obama. And while party leaders rebuked the campaign committee chief, Representative Greg Walden of Oregon, individual Republican candidates and “super PACs” would be free to wage their own attacks.

For now, at least, the political warnings to Democrats are coming mostly from the left of their own party.

“You cannot be a good Democrat and cut Social Security,” said Arshad Hasan, the executive director of Democracy for America, a liberal grass-roots group, which staged a small protest outside the White House last week even before Mr. Obama released his annual budget on Wednesday.

“People would be looking to punish them,” said Robert Borosage, a co-founder of the Campaign for America’s Future, another liberal group, “and they would be looking for primary challengers.”

Even if Democratic incumbents do not draw a primary challenger, liberal activists say, they might face a shortage of volunteers motivated enough to do the hard work of campaigning — just as Democrats did in the 2010 midterms, which resulted in big Republican gains.

Looking further ahead, to 2016, some on the left have already begun talking about encouraging a liberal Democrat — the freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is the name most bandied — to take up the “don’t touch Social Security or Medicare” banner as part of a liberal bid for the party’s nomination to succeed Mr. Obama, even against Hillary Rodham Clinton or Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Such talk was stoked when Ms. Warren, within hours of the release of the president’s budget on Wednesday, sent supporters an e-mail sounding an alarm: “Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle-class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled inch by inch.”

She was not available for an interview, aides said on Friday.

“If the major candidates running for the Democratic nomination hedge on important issues like Social Security, they will leave open a tremendous amount of space for an insurgent,” said Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a group often critical of Mr. Obama.

But, Mr. Green acknowledged, “I wouldn’t say anybody’s laying the groundwork yet.”

At a minimum, Mr. Borosage said, all Democratic candidates in 2014 or 2016 “will be forced to take a stand.”

That prospect could complicate the campaign strategies of establishment favorites. Mr. Biden is inevitably tied to Mr. Obama’s policies. And Mrs. Clinton, as a senator, was a fiscal moderate who extolled her husband’s budget-balancing record of compromise. President Bill Clinton negotiated Medicare savings with Congressional Republicans, and their 1997 deal nearly included the same proposal trimming Social Security cost-of-living increases that Mr. Obama has put in his budget to entice Republicans to compromise in turn.

Ideological litmus tests have lately been more divisive for Republicans than for Democrats, over taxes and social issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration. But the agitation on the left to defend Social Security and Medicare, the two programs that Democrats consider perhaps their party’s greatest legacy, did not begin last week with Mr. Obama’s new budget.

It had been building since mid-2011, when the president, in private negotiations with Speaker John A. Boehner, tentatively agreed to the new formula for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security; economists recommend the formula as more accurate, but it would mean smaller increases for Social Security beneficiaries. Even so, Democrats in Congress and the White House agree that the party would have supported Mr. Obama back then if a compromise deal had come to a vote.

But the 2011 talks, just like a second round of negotiations in December, collapsed after Mr. Boehner declined to agree to Mr. Obama’s counterdemands: new taxes on the wealthy and on some corporations, and job-creating investments in infrastructure projects, research and education.

Sarah Wheaton contributed reporting.

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Obama’s First Term: A Romantic Oral History

Nadav Kander for The New York TimesClockwise from top left: Joseph R. Biden Jr., vice president; Desirée Rogers, former White House social secretary; Jon Favreau, speechwriting director; Rahm Emanuel, former White House chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser; David Axelrod, former senior adviser.

Four years ago, on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration, this magazine devoted nearly an entire issue to a photo essay, “Obama’s People.” The photographs, 52 of them, depicted a team arriving on a wave of hope despite inheriting an economy in trouble, a collapsing auto industry, two wars and a continuing terrorist threat.

Four years later, they have met some of those challenges, been daunted by others and created new ones of their own. The economy is better but still anemic. Osama bin Laden is dead and the Iraq war over, but Afghanistan remains a morass and the prison at Guantánamo Bay remains open. The auto industry has been saved and health care expanded, but national debt has soared. A dictator in Libya has been toppled, but a dictator in Syria slaughters his own people undeterred.

Roughly half of the people in the photo essay are now gone, some embittered by realities they did not anticipate or cast aside by a president cutting losses. The gauzy hope of 2009 has faded into the starker realism of 2013. The Washington they promised to transform is as divided as ever. As the president prepares to take the oath of office for a second term, his team looks back at the four years that brought them to this point. Told in their own voices, the story is, unsurprisingly and perhaps out of necessity, a romantic one.

Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council (2009-11): I remember coming out of the transition office the day before the inauguration, and it was like walking into a street festival. It was sunny, and people were happy, and there were tons of people, and it was very, very festive.

Desirée Rogers, White House social secretary (2009-10): We had a certain amount of time to prepare the home for the first family. Someone asked me, “What side of the bed does the president sleep on?” I’m like, Yikes, I don’t know if I know that. For people that look like me, for my race, to be there and to have witnessed that — I just kept thinking about my grandfather and how he would feel had he lived to see this day, because in so many instances the gentlemen that served the president looked like my grandfather.

During the swearing in of the president, Chief Justice John Roberts mangles the words in the oath.
Gregory Craig, White House counsel (2009-10): This opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel says that if the president does not say all the words of the oath, then he is not president of the United States. I said, “Is there anybody over there that really thinks he’s not president?” David [Barron, acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel] said: “No, no, no, we all think he is president. But there may be a judge somewhere, or some hearing could be called on this, or it could be a problem in the future.” I thought, We gotta fix this. There was a long line of people waiting to shake hands with the president in the residence. We said, “Mr. President, can we talk to you a second?” There was a little bit of, “You gotta be kidding.” I said, “I’ll call the chief justice’s chambers and see if he can come down.” The chief justice carried his robes, and the president arrived. The chief justice goes into the corner and says, “This is a ceremonial occasion, I’m going to put on my robe.” The chief justice is doing it from memory again, and I thought to myself, Would it be wrong for me to go forward and say something? At which point, the president says, “Now, let’s keep this real slow.” They did it, and that was it.

Shortly after taking office, Obama decides to sign a large spending bill with thousands of earmarks to avoid undercutting Congressional support for his $800 billion stimulus package. In doing so, he helps establish an image of himself as a big spender.
David Axelrod, White House senior adviser (2009-11): He was very much of a mind to veto the bill. We were in the midst of trying to pass the Recovery Act, and some of his legislative folks said, “Mr. President, you can veto the bill, but if you do, you jeopardize our ability to pass the Recovery Act.” He was very frustrated. He just kind of glared, and he ultimately sort of nodded. I’m not sure he even said anything. But I know in retrospect that was probably one of the decisions he regretted the most.

In March 2009, after a sharp debate among his advisers, Obama decides to bail out the auto industry.
Rahm Emanuel, White House chief of staff (2009-10): All the advisers were divided, the public was absolutely against it. Nobody is giving you consensus, there is no consensus. Nobody had ever done what we were about to do. And he picks the hardest option.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 19, 2013

A collection of pictures on Page 36 this weekend with an article about President Obama’s first term includes members of the administration or key players during Mr. Obama’s first term; not all of them are members of the administration. Also, the pictures tinted blue represent either members of the administration or key players who are planning to leave or who have already left — not only those who have left.

And Ken Salazar, who is not shown as one of those leaving, announced after the magazine had gone to press that he was stepping down as Secretary of the Interior, as expected.

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Record Spending by Obama’s Camp Shrinks Coffers

Since the beginning of last year, Mr. Obama and the Democrats have burned through millions of dollars to find and register voters. They have spent almost $50 million subsidizing Democratic state parties to hire workers, pay for cellphones and update voter lists. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on polling, online advertising and software development to turn Mr. Obama’s fallow volunteers corps into a grass-roots army.

The price tag: about $400 million from the beginning of last year to June 30 this year, according to a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records, including $86 million on advertising.

But now Mr. Obama’s big-dollar bet is being tested. With less than a month to go before the national party conventions begin, the president’s once commanding cash advantage has evaporated, leaving Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee with about $25 million more cash on hand than the Democrats as of the beginning of July.

Despite Mr. Obama’s multimillion-dollar advertising barrage against Mr. Romney, he is now being outspent on the airwaves with Mr. Romney benefiting from a deluge of spending by conservative “super PACs” and outside groups. While Mr. Romney has depleted much of his funds from the nominating contest, he is four weeks away from being able to tap into tens of millions of dollars in general election money. And many polls show the race to be very close.

Mr. Obama’s cash needs — he spent $70.8 million in June alone, more than half on advertising and far more than he raised — have brought new urgency to his campaign’s fund-raising efforts. His advisers have had to schedule more fund-raising trips than originally planned to big-money states like New York, according to donors involved in the effort. The super PAC supporting his campaign, Priorities USA Action, is enlisting former President Bill Clinton as a rainmaker, hoping to counter its conservative counterparts.

While Mr. Obama will also have access to general election money in September, he is unlikely to have the same spending advantage over Mr. Romney as he had during the primary season, when Mr. Romney spent much of his money battling Republican rivals.

And with August a traditionally slow month for fund-raising, Mr. Obama has bombarded his supporters in recent weeks with increasingly urgent pleas for money, mindful that he will need to drastically raise his cash intake in the coming months merely to equal his record-breaking haul from 2008.

“My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as president of the United States, but that’s not up to me — it’s up to you,” Mr. Obama wrote last week as the campaign’s latest fund-raising deadline and his Aug. 4 birthday approached. “This July deadline is our most urgent yet, coming after two consecutive months of being significantly outraised by Romney and the Republicans.”

Mr. Obama’s heavy expenditures — and his campaign’s pressure on bundlers to find and groom new donors — have stirred worries among other Democrats, who have long taken Mr. Obama’s financial supremacy for granted.

“There is a lot of worry that Romney’s folks are raising so much more,” said one of Mr. Obama’s top fund-raisers, who did not want to be identified as discussing internal campaign business. “I just don’t think there’s a lot of high-dollar money left on the table.”

In fact, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama will rue his spending.

“Heading into the final laps of the campaign, the Democrats will regret squandering so much of their haul early in the cycle on massive monthly overhead,” said Sean M. Spicer, a spokesman for the R.N.C.

But in interviews, party and campaign officials defended the approach of spending money to build out the campaign, saying they believed that the wisdom of Mr. Obama’s strategy would be demonstrated at the voting booth in November.

“The earlier the better,” said Adam Fetcher, an Obama campaign spokesman. “Starting a conversation with a persuadable voter months before Election Day allows us to be more effective in responding to that voter’s priorities than if they first hear from us a few weeks out. Building and maintaining our grass-roots foundation takes time and resources, but we believe those early investments will make a difference.”

But grass-roots movements do not come cheap.

Kitty Bennett and Derek Willis contributed reporting.

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Obama's Campaign Zeroes In on Romney's Wealth

3:46 p.m. | Updated Is Mitt Romney too rich to be president?

President Obama’s push on Monday to extend tax cuts for the middle class — but not for the rich — is being joined by a new, all-out effort from his allies to portray Mr. Romney as out of touch with average Americans.

On Sunday, Democrats seized on new reports about Mr. Romney’s offshore bank accounts to hammer the presumptive Republican nominee, accusing him of not being forthcoming about the sources of his multimillion dollar fortune.

By Monday, more of Mr. Obama’s surrogates were hitting the airwaves to mock Mr. Romney’s day of high-dollar fund-raisers at estates in the Hamptons. The Democratic National Committee created a video highlighting reports of bank accounts in offshore institutions.

Brad Woodhouse, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee e-mailed the video to reporters with the subject line: “Sunday Blood Sunday.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Monday, Robert Gibbs, a senior adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaign, bluntly accused the Republican candidate of not giving voters the information they need to make a decision about his wealth.

“Release the tax returns,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Put all this to rest. If Mitt Romney is not hiding something in Bermuda and Switzerland and the Caymans, it will be in the tax returns.”

Mr. Romney’s allies hit back furiously against the suggestion that he was hiding anything. Dan Señor, an adviser to Mr. Romney, said on “Morning Joe” that Mr. Gibbs was being “stunningly dishonest” in his attacks.

“The reason we know about these accounts, as Robert knows, is because they are in the tax returns that Mitt Romney released,” Mr. Señor said. “We know this because he submitted this information.”

A statement from the Republican campaign called questions about Mr. Romney’s wealth an “unfounded character assault” and said it was “unseemly and disgusting.”

Mr. Romney’s personal wealth became a serious issue during the Republican primary campaign when his rivals demanded to see his tax returns. Mr. Romney eventually released two years of his returns.

But since then, Mr. Obama’s campaign has focused more directly on Mr. Romney’s role as a business executive, suggesting that his career was a boon to the wealthy and that he did not have the interests of workers at heart.

The campaign first attacked Mr. Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, for shutting down factories and laying people off. Then it turned to the issue of outsourcing, describing Mr. Romney’s company as a “pioneer” in moving jobs overseas.

Now, it looks as if Mr. Obama’s strategists are ready to focus once again more directly on Mr. Romney’s wealth.

Will it work?

Democrats are hoping to find the right mix of policy and politics by offering voters a striking contrast between Mr. Obama’s refusal to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and Mr. Romney’s desire to cut taxes for people like himself.

Last week, Democratic allies of the president’s repeatedly pointed to Mr. Romney’s vacation at his lakeside estate in New Hampshire of evidence of his being out-of-touch.

In the East Room on Monday, Mr. Obama drew the line just that sharply, saying that under the economic ideas of Republicans, “the wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled.”

He did not mention Mr. Romney by name, but predicted that the fight over tax cuts for the wealthy would be resolved by the choice that voters make in the presidential election this November.

“My opponent will fight to keep them in place,” he said. “I will fight to end them.”

Mr. Romney’s advisers believe the effort to focus voters on Mr. Romney’s wealth will misfire. They argue that voters want the candidates to talk about how they will turn around an economy that has battered middle class people.

Polling suggests they may be right. A Washington Post / ABC News survey in April found that 71 percent of those surveyed did not believe that Mr. Romney’s wealth would be a major reason to support or oppose him.

The polling did suggest that for those who said it was a major factor in the decision, it was more likely to be a negative. But Mr. Romney’s advisers argue that the facts about his offshore accounts will make that less likely.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Mr. Romney’s campaign, said on Fox News Sunday that the Republican candidate “hasn’t paid a penny less in taxes by virtue of where these funds are domiciled.” he said, “His liability is exactly the same as if he held the fund investments directly in the U.S.”

But for the most part, Mr. Romney’s advisers intend to try and ignore the attacks on his personal wealth. On Monday, they focused their responses on Mr. Obama’s renewed call to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire.

“Americans are struggling in a ‘zombie economy’ and President Obama’s only answer is to pass one of the largest tax hikes in history,” said Amanda Henneberg, a spokeswoman. “President Obama’s tax increases on families and job creators will create more economic uncertainty and fewer opportunities for struggling middle-class families.”

UPDATE: Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama’s campaign, emailed Monday afternoon to say that the president is not targeting Mr. Romney because he is a wealthy individual.

“This is not our intention. It’s not about wealth,” Mr. LaBolt wrote. “There have been other wealthy candidates, nobody is out to demonize wealth.”

Instead, Mr. LaBolt drew a distintion between Mr. Romney’s wealth and what the Democratic spokesman called Mr. Romney’s lack of “transparency” when it comes to disclosing information about his financial situation.

“It’s about the fact that Governor Romney, who could be the first President in history to keep his finances offshore, has defied precedent and kept his tax returns secret even though they could prove whether or not he avoided paying taxes,” Mr. LaBolt said.

Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.

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Senate Passes Its First Portion of Obama's Jobs Plan (The Atlantic Wire)

A bill giving businesses tax credits for hiring military veterans became the first part of President Barack Obama's sweeping American Jobs Act to pass the Senate on Thursday. It's also the first bit of jobs-bill cooperation for the Senate in a while, Politico notes. After Republicans blocked the American Jobs Act as a whole back in October, Democrats tried to introduce it piece by piece, but the two bills they've brought to the Senate floor have both failed. Earlier on Thursday, Democrats scored some retribution on the Republicans by defeating its alternative jobs plan. But later, in an especially rare bit of bipartisanship, the vote to approve the veteran-hiring bill (on the eve of Veterans' Day, no less) was 94-to-1, with only Sen. Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, saying the government shouldn't "privilege one American over another when it comes to work." DeMint's counterpart, Lindsey Graham, had the quote of the day, however, with this pep talk: "There is more potential [for bipartisanship] than people realize. You just got to want it."

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Mullen sees risk in Obama's Afghanistan withdrawal (AP)

By ROBERT BURNS and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Robert Burns And Matthew Lee, Associated Press – Thu Jun 23, 7:12 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The nation's top military officer and its top diplomat made clear Thursday that President Barack Obama rejected the advice of his generals in choosing a quicker path to winding down the war in Afghanistan.

The Obama troop withdrawal plan, widely interpreted as marking the beginning of the end of the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan, drew criticism from both sides of the political aisle on Capitol Hill. Some Republicans decried it as undercutting the military mission at a critical stage of the war, while many Democrats called it too timid.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., took a swipe at Obama from the Senate floor, questioning the timing of his troop pullout plan.

"Just when they are one year away from turning over a battered and broken enemy in both southern and eastern Afghanistan to our Afghan partners — the president has now decided to deny them the forces that our commanders believe they need to accomplish their objective," McCain said.

Obama announced Wednesday night that he will pull 10,000 troops from Afghanistan by December and another 23,000 by the end of next summer.

On Thursday, the president spoke at New York's Fort Drum to troops and commanders of the Army's 10th Mountain Division. Its headquarters staff is in southern Afghanistan and its soldiers have been among the most frequently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.

Obama, perhaps responding to the flank of criticism from the right, said that he is not pulling home troops "precipitously" or risking the gain they've achieved.

"We're going to do it in a steady way to make sure that the gains that all of you helped to bring about are going to be sustained," he said. "Because of you, we're now taking the fight to the Taliban, instead of the Taliban bringing the fight to us. And because of you, there are signs that the Taliban may be interested in figuring out a political settlement, which ultimately is going to be critical for consolidating that country."

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee that he supports the Obama plan, although he had recommended a less aggressive drawdown schedule.

Obama's approach adds risk to the military mission, Mullen said. But he added, "It's manageable risk."

Army Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said later that he, too, had recommended a more gradual withdrawal — as had Marine Gen. James Mattis, who as commander of U.S. Central Command is Petraeus' immediate boss and overseer of all U.S. military operations in the greater Mideast.

Petraeus, appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is considering his nomination to become CIA director, had a telling exchange with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. Levin asked the general whether he would resign if he felt he could not support Obama's decision.

"I'm not a quitter," Petraeus replied. "This is something I have thought a bit about. I don't think it's the place for a commander to actually consider that kind of step unless you are in a very, very dire situation."

In the same exchange, Petraeus appeared to suggest that he had vigorously opposed the timeline that the president chose. Levin asked Petraeus whether he felt comfortable supporting the plan now.

Petraeus wouldn't sign up for that without qualification. He implied he remains uneasy about the decision but said he does not think the plan is destined to fail.

Petraeus said he was returning to Kabul on Friday to work with his staff on how to implement the Obama plan.

Obama's plan will leave 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan after the drawdown. Most of those troops would gradually come home over the next two years, and the U.S. plans to close out its combat role in Afghanistan by 2015.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tacitly acknowledged the military had wanted more troops to remain for a longer period of time. And she said the keys to finally ending the conflict will be political negotiations with the Taliban leadership and managing a highly contentious relationship with Pakistan.

Clinton told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that prospects for successful peace talks with the Taliban are unclear. She said the U.S. was involved in "very preliminary" contacts with the Taliban, which she said has only recently shown signs that it may be ready to talk about a political settlement.

Such contacts with enemies are distasteful but worthwhile, she said, given the historical fact that few insurgencies have been defeated without a combination of military pressure and negotiation.

"This is not a pleasant business, but a necessary one," she said.

Clinton added that she was hopeful about a political settlement. Still, she said, "We're a long way from knowing what the realistic elements of such an agreement would be."

At least as murky is the outlook for cooperation with Pakistan. Clinton said the administration is stepping up pressure on Islamabad to take more aggressive action to help eliminate extremist elements like the Haqqani terrorist network.

"When it comes to our military aid ... we are not prepared to continue providing that at the pace we were providing it unless and until we see certain steps taken," she said, noting that Pakistan and U.S. interests do not always mesh well.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in an interview with "PBS Newhour," said he did not have a preferred option going in to the discussions with Obama. But as he listened to the debate, he said, he became a strong advocate of the proposal to bring the surge troops home by the end of summer. That plan, he said, struck a balance between the military needs and the pressures here at home.

Gates said that American war fatigue played a role in the thinking, but he said he concluded that the plan would leave about 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and that there was enough time between now and next fall to train more Afghan security forces, so they can take the security lead across the country.

Mullen, who is retiring this fall, also cited the importance of the political dimensions of the conflict. Much of the questioning from committee members, however, focused on his opening statement in which he declared his support for Obama's troop withdrawal plan while also making clear that he originally considered it a mistake.

"The president's decisions are more aggressive and incur more risk than I was originally prepared to accept," Mullen said. "More force for more time is, without doubt, the safer course. But that does not necessarily make it the best course. Only the president, in the end, can really determine the acceptable level of risk we must take. I believe he has done so."

Some in Congress have suggested that Obama was playing politics with the war plan, questioning why he would insist that the last of the 33,000 "surge" troops he ordered to Afghanistan in December 2009 leave the country by September 2012, which happens to coincide with the home stretch of his re-election campaign.

Military commanders favored a withdrawal plan that would allow them to keep as many troops in Afghanistan for as long as possible, ideally through the end of 2012

Mullen said he and the two four-star generals most directly involved in managing the war — Mattis and Petraeus — all support the president's plan. All three offered their views to Obama, "freely and without hesitation," Mullen said, as part of what he described as an inclusive and comprehensive White House decision-making process.

In her testimony, Clinton said it should be no surprise that U.S. commanders had pushed for a slower drawdown of troops.

"I think it would be totally understandable that a military commander would want as many troops for as long as he could get them," Clinton said. "But any military commander with the level of expertise and experience that Gen. Petraeus has also knows that what he wants is just part of the overall decision matrix and that there are other factors at work."

Petraeus said he made specific recommendations to Obama during a process that he called vigorous and inclusive.

"The ultimate decision was a more aggressive formulation, if you will, in terms of the timeline, than what we had recommended. Again, that is understandable," the general said. He did not cite specifics of his own recommendation to Obama, but he portrayed the disagreement as narrow. "We're talking about small differences."

Petraeus' designated replacement in Kabul is Marine Lt. Gen. John R. Allen, whose Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for next week.

___

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Julie Pace, Donna Cassata and Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

Robert Burns can be reached at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP

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White House Swaps Applause for Laughter at Obama's Job Boast (The Atlantic Wire)

Attention conservative blogosphere: the White House would like to set the record straight about a little parenthetical in a recent transcript. Late yesterday, you see, the White House posted Obama's recent remarks to the Democratic National Committee, which included this line: "Over the last 15 months we've created over 2.1 million private sector jobs. (Laughter.)."

Related: New Poll Puts Obama's Job Approval Up 11 Points, But Will It Last?

Related: President Obama Magically Silences a Crying Baby

Conservative bloggers, of course, had a field day. The Drudge Report has been running the excerpt as an above-the-fold headline for much of the day. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit chose the headline, "Wow. Even DNC Donors Break Out in Laughter When Obama Claims He Created Jobs," adding, "For the record… The country has lost 2.5 million jobs since he moved into the White House. Maybe that's why they were laughing?" Kerry Pickett at The Washington Times was a bit more forgiving, hypothesizing that "those watching the closed captioned text of the speech on television sets saw a laugh cue instead of an applause cue." To be sure, Pickett added, "the president isn't laughing, but Republicans and other critics of his private sector job creation claims sure are."

Related: The Behind-the-Scenes Moments of the Bin Laden Raid

Mistake or not, the White House moved to correct the record. A little after 4 PM EST, it sent out a "corrected" version of the transcript to the White House press list, striking out "laughter" and replacing it with "applause." Will the bloggers buy it?

Related: Obama Decides Against Releasing Bin Laden Photos

Related: What the Navy SEAL Helmet Cams Saw During the Bin Laden Raid

Want to add to this story? Open Wire.

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Some liberals frustrated by pace of Obama's change (AP)

MINNEAPOLIS – What's a frustrated liberal to do? Democrats on the ideological left are grousing that President Barack Obama is just not that into them, and they're soul searching at a big weekend meeting about the strained political relationship as he seeks re-election.

Might they stay home when he asks them to vote for him again?

"We were promised he would be our fierce advocate. And I don't think he has been fierce and I don't think he likes to advocate very much," said John Aravosis, an editor with AMERICAblog who has written about gay rights issues.

But Obama's advisers hope that between now and November 2012 the president can persuade this critical part of his base to turn out in droves again, and the wooing by aides was well under way Friday.

"I promise he is as frustrated as you are," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told about 2,400 bloggers and activists attending the annual Netroots Nation conference. He assured them they were "a very important part of the coalition that got him here."

Not that it feels that way for many liberals who consider Obama's record a mixed bag at best when it comes to championing their causes.

They see him as being too willing to compromise with Republicans on such issues as dropping the proposed public option for the health insurance overhaul and extending George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest. They're pleased he signed a law to repeal the ban on openly gay service members, but many feel that happened only after incessant pressure on the White House.

Others complain that Obama has embraced big business, unimpressed by Wall Street regulation changes and annoyed that Obama appointed General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt to lead a presidential advisory council on competitiveness even as the company avoided paying federal taxes in 2010.

One panel at the conference reflected the rift: "What to Do When Your President Is Just Not That Into You." Moderator Joan McCarter jokingly called it "The `president isn't our boyfriend anymore' panel."

Taken together, it all raises the question of whether liberals, who always play important fundraising and volunteering roles for Democratic presidential candidates, will be energized when Obama runs for re-election next year or whether they will stay home on Election Day and deny Obama a critical contingent of grass-roots foot-soldiers.

It's not as if liberals are likely to back someone else. Obama doesn't have a serious Democratic primary opponent, and liberal views are ideologically opposed to many espoused by the Republican Party's presidential candidates.

"We have to hold this administration accountable, but we will get a choice between President Obama and our worst nightmare," said Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association.

To a certain degree, there's a political upside for Obama if liberals are cranky — he may appear to be more a centrist candidate and that may make him more attractive to the independent voters who often decide close elections.

Obama advisers acknowledge the base is frustrated, but they expect liberal voters to rally around the president in next year's election.

"While there is always more work we can do and we take absolutely nothing for granted and will work every single day, we have very good support from his base and are ready to build on that," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Despite the complaining, liberals' impressions of Obama have not slipped in recent months. But they didn't improve, either, following the killing of Osama bin Laden, as happened among other ideological groups.

In the May AP-GfK poll, 62 percent of liberals rated Obama's presidency as outstanding or above average, statistically similar to August 2010. Among moderates and conservatives, however, Obama's ratings on this question ticked upward. Likewise, Obama's overall approval ratings among liberals have hovered around 80 percent for the past year in AP-GfK polling, with no discernible bump following the al-Qaida leader's death.

The reception Pfeiffer got when he was interviewed onstage by Kaili Joy Gray of the Daily Kos website underscored the tension between Obama and some liberals.

Questioned about the president's policies on the economy, gay rights and tax cuts, Pfeiffer argued that Obama has worked hard to get his agenda through a divided Congress during a time of hardship.

Pfeiffer said the White House would serve as a check against Republican efforts to undercut Medicare, privatize Social Security and repeal the health care overhaul. Obama, he said, would work to bring wireless technology to rural areas, develop alternative energy sources and offer tax incentives for small business.

But the audience was clearly skeptical. The interview grew tense at times, and Pfeiffer was booed when he responded to a question about a 1996 legislative-race questionnaire in which Obama had said he supported gay marriage. Pfeiffer said someone else had filled out the questionnaire and Obama was "evolving on the issue" along with the rest of the nation.

Gray also pushed Pfeiffer for details on whether the administration would offer a comprehensive job-creation bill. "With a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, why wouldn't we have a jobs bill?" she said icily.

Frustration, if not anger, was clear.

At one panel, Dan Choi, an Iraq War veteran who was discharged for being gay, ripped up an Obama campaign pamphlet and tossed it into the air when an aide to Obama's political organization told him that the aide personally wasn't supportive of gay marriage.

"I believe that I'm an equal citizen," Choi scolded the staffer.

Elsewhere at the conference, liberals questioned the president's commitment to the DREAM Act, which would give a path to legal status for young people who were brought into the United States without documents as children and who either plan to attend college or join the military. It stalled in Congress last year.

Some activists want Obama to use his administrative powers to protect those who would be covered under the legislation from being deported. And they complain about the Obama administration's deportation of nearly 400,000 immigrants in 2010, a record, while noting his efforts to court Hispanics as he seeks a second term.

"Obama has the guts to deport our mothers, deport our fathers, deport our people and then come to us and say `I want your vote'? Please," said Felipe Matos, a Miami immigration activist.

For all the griping, many liberals here appear resigned.

They know Obama is their only option to ensure Democrats continue to control the White House. They point to efforts in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere to strip away collective bargaining rights from most public workers as an example of what could happen if Republicans win.

Said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a one-time Democratic Party chairman: "The alternative is in clear sight."

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Associated Press Deputy Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Ken Thomas can be reached at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

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The Obamas Give First Stump Speeches of the 2012 Campaign (The Atlantic Wire)

The Obamas delivered 2012 stump speeches at Democratic National Committee fundraisers in Miami and and Los Angeles Monday, reminding supporters that "We are not done," as the first lady said. President Obama is working to win back the Democratic donors who've soured on him since 2008, reminding them that "Big changes don't happen overnight.... The reason we're here today is because our work is not done."

Barack Obama's first stop was at a $10,000-a-plate dinner at the home of Samsonite's former CEO Steven Green, who also served as Clinton's ambassador to Singapore. Then he hit the "Obama Victory Fund 2012 Kick-Off Reception," which cost between $250 and $2,500 a ticket. Then he moved on to a dinner event at the home of J.P. and Maggie Austin, which cost attendees $35,800 per person, CBS4 reports. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama went on her first fundraising trip without the president, speaking at two fundraisers, filming a guest spot on the Nickelodeon show iCarly, and sitting on a panel with Second Lady Jill Biden and J.J. Abrams and urged Hollywood to portray the military in a more positive light.

Related: Is Nancy Pelosi Getting Sidelined by Steny Hoyer?

Both Obamas' addresses sounded like stump speeches. They ticked off the president's accomplishments on health care and financial regulatory reform. "Oh, and along the way," Barack Obama reminded donors, "we did a few other things" like repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell and appoint two women to the Supreme Court. Some liberals are pretty frustrated with the president, and both Obamas insisted the president had faced an uphill battle. "It’s going to be long," the first lady said. "It is going to be hard. I joke, did you ever think Barack Obama was going to be easy? Was there ever anybody here who just thought he’d just trounce in and fix everything, Barack Obama?"

Related: Dems Form Group to Rake in Secret Donations

The Obamas have some work to do in reassuring donors, The Wall Street Journal's Carol E. Lee and Jonathan Weisman report. Hillary Clinton supporters, especially, are reluctant to bundle contributions from friends, and even reelection adviser David Axelrod acknowledges donors have been neglected. "I don't think we have been particularly attentive to the so-called care and feeding of donors," Axelrod told The Journal. "I think it was largely a function of the fact that the president and everybody around him was absorbed in dealing with some fairly significant challenges."

Related: Here Comes the Government Shutdown

But rekindling donor romance has not always been easy, The Journal says. Take this incident, for example:

At a recent gathering of major donors here, former National Economic Council Director Larry Summers, who headlined a breakout session on the economy, got into an exchange with a donor that resulted in the man walking out of the session, according to people at the event.

The donor told Mr. Summers that he'd had trouble getting approved for a loan, according to people present. After the man repeatedly returned to his personal troubles, Mr. Summers said that no one at the conference--where attendees were asked to raise $350,000--was experiencing the kinds of financial difficulties faced by ordinary Americans. The man got frustrated and left the room, people at the event said.

Tuesday Obama will be in Puerto Rico for another fundraiser. Puerto Ricans gave $4 million in federal campaign donations in 2008, $354,000 of them to Obama, ABC News' Devin Dwyer reports. Obama is the first president to honor the island with an official visit since John F. Kennedy went in 1961. Dwyer writes,

The symbolism of the trip might hold the greatest significance for Obama and Democrats, however, generating goodwill with the booming Puerto Rican population living inside the United States, particularly Florida, where they can cast presidential ballots next fall.

Fewer grumpy donors there, perhaps.

Related: Obama: I Don't Have Horns

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