SO ARE WE – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:  David Axelrod, Obama's senior political guy, says the president is "feeling feisty" after the worst week of his presidency, and has no intention of mending his ways.  From The Politico:

President Obama is moving swiftly to try to recover from his worst week in the White House, speeding up his schedule for engaging in the 2010 political races and planning to use his State of the Union address on Wednesday to show the public a feisty side, White House senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview with POLITICO.

Feisty?  What means this?

He vowed, however, that there will be “no reinventing” of the president, even though “Washington loves a shakeup or human sacrifice.”

“There’s no need to,” Axelrod said. “We’re governing through difficult times. There’s a sense of impatience and frustration about the state of the economy, but also about the nature of how Washington works. That was true in 2008, and it’s true now. The president is as determined to deal with those things now as he was then.”

Trouble is, he's had a year and nothing has worked.  You can only blame BUSH (!!) for so long.

Stunned by the rejection of the Democrat in the Massachusetts Senate race last week, Obama asked David Plouffe, his 2008 campaign manager, to increase his work as an outside White House adviser.

“Everybody would acknowledge that we kind of took Massachusetts for granted and we shouldn’t have,” Axelrod said. “It just reminded us that we’ve got to be at the top of our game.”

Plouffe’s mission is to bring the winning formula he brought to the 2008 campaign to this fall’s Democratic campaigns, at a time when economic and historical headwinds threaten the party with a rout.

“The same forces that we saw at play in Massachusetts were the ones that propelled [Obama] to office,” Axelrod said. “There’s no reinventing any message here. It’s a reaffirmation of a message. And that is our goal to advocate fiercely for the middle class and for people all across this country who’ve been struggling in this economy and long before the recession.”

Plouffe is a first-class political operative.  No matter how strongly we might feel about the mess in the White House, don't underestimate him.  Remember, virtually every poll shows that, while Americans are rejecting the administration, they aren't embracing the Republican Party, which has a remarkable skill at blowing opportunities and ruining a message. 

Also, there are some growing indications of major splits in some regional Republican organizations, splits between pragmatists and ideologues.  We could easily see a situation, as we did in the presidential race of 1992, when a third-party candidate splits the conservative vote.  (Ross Perot took votes from George H.W. Bush in 1992.) 

There are no guarantees for Republicans, only opportunities.

January 24, 2010