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--Editors: Jodi Schneider, Jim Rubin.
To contact the reporters on this story: Richard Rubin in Washington at rrubin12@bloomberg.net; Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at rdonmoyer@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at msilva34@bloomberg.net
With all the talk of problems the tax extension deal creates for President Obama from his left, at least one would-be 2012 presidential contender doesn't seem interested in rising to the primary challenge.
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean, who served as the Democratic National Committee chairman after his failed 2004 White House bid, had been named as a potential taker in challenging the president from within the party. But Dean said Sunday he doesn't expect Obama to have to endure a primary challenger.
"I don't think he's going to face an opponent in the Democratic primary. I think that would be a bad thing for the country and I think it would be a bad thing for the Democratic Party. The history of people running against presidents in their own party is the challenger loses and then the president is weakened and loses," Dean said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod, who's leaving the White House soon to crank up the president's re-election effort, said he, too, isn't worried about a primary challenge.
"No, I don't worry about that at all," Axelrod said on the same program, "because I think he's done good things for the country. He's fighting for the American people and for progress. And that progress is going to show. The thing that would be worrisome to me if we made a bunch of decisions based on short-term political calculations."
Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., agreed that Obama won't face a challenge despite all the anger about the backroom deal he negotiated last week with Republicans and absent Democratic input.
"No. There's no challenge. Look, everybody's on the same page. Everyone supports the same agenda," he told "Fox News Sunday," though he noted that some members of the Democratic Caucus will "never go along with any compromise" on tax rates.
But the anger on the left over the president's deal-making, seen by many as an acknowledgement of the "shellacking" Democrats took in the midterm election, gave rise to talk of a challenger somewhere.
One report said liberals in the House were dropping F-bombs on the president during the week. McClatchy reported Saturday a new poll of 1,029 adults that showed the president's approval rating among liberals dropping from 78 to 69 percent, while his disapproval rating in that group jumped from 14 to 22 percent. Obama's approval rating is 42 percent overall, according to the poll.
Dean's name came up as a possible challenger, as did those of defeated Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin or would-be filibustering independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
But since then, some on the left, while angry about compromise, have tempered their outbursts. That cooling-off may have been the result of former President Bill Clinton's encore turn Friday at the White House briefing room, which left some to concede that if it's good enough for the ever-popular Clinton, it's good enough for them.
For others, it may have been the dire warnings from editorialists like The Washington Post's Colbert King, who said a primary challenge would leave the Democratic Party paying "a steep price" for years to come.
So far, the only potential candidate reportedly willing to go on record about stepping up to a primary challenge is former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.
That's not to say that liberal Democrats aren't livid at the president. Progressive organizers and Internet campaigners who joined the "Rootscamp" event in Washington, D.C., this weekend did not disguise their disgust about the White House decision to cooperate with Republicans.
"After President Obama's victory, there was a promise that his vast grassroots network would help push the popular progressive change he campaigned on into law -- things like the public option and ending tax cuts for the rich. Unfortunately, as the White House cut backroom deals that undercut those promises, they also demobilized their grassroots troops," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Campaign Committee. Green said his and other liberal groups "are now picking up the ball that this White House dropped."
But with a resounding silence among viable candidates who could challenge the previously adored president, angry liberals have few places to turn.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the second-in-command in the U.S. Senate and among the first lawmakers to encourage Obama to make a bid for the White House said the "harsh reality" is that any president will have to "accommodate the demands" of Republicans whether they want to or not.
"If we want to change Washington and continue to move in the right direction, we need to stand together. And sometimes the accommodations that we make, the compromises that we make may be painful, but we've got to eat the spinach and keep moving on," he said on CNN.
Axelrod acknowledged that in 2012 Obama will have to face the politics of newly scheduled-to-expire tax rates, but he will have the American people on his side when he defends his refusal to make current tax rates permanent.
"Right now, we face a situation where everyone's taxes would go up on January 1. I think we're going to be in a fundamentally different position in 2012. The economy will be stronger. We'll have gone through a big debate on -- on how we have to -- what we have to cut and give up. I don't think people are going to make that tradeoff in 2012," he said.
And if it's a 2012 challenge from the right, Axelrod is best off to prepare now. The McClatchy poll out over the weekend showed Republican Mitt Romney defeating Obama in a hypothetical 2012 matchup. That's attributed to Obama's apparent drop in popularity among independent voters, who prefer Romney to the president 47-39 percent.
Responding to criticism from Obama, Netanyahu struck a defiant tone in commenting on plans to build 1,300 more Jewish housing units in East Jerusalem, saying his government had never agreed to limit construction in the city.
"Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is the capital of the state of Israel," Netanyahu said in a statement. "Israel sees no connection between the diplomatic process and the planning and building policy in Jerusalem."
"This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations, and I'm concerned that we're not seeing each side make that extra effort involved to get a breakthrough," Obama said. "Each of these incremental steps end up breaking trust."
Israel also is moving ahead with 800 units in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, Israeli news reports said Tuesday.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Israel's latest expansions are part of "a premeditated process to kill the possibility of an independent Palestinian state." He said that if the Obama administration is unable to get peace talks back on track in the coming weeks, it should recognize an independent Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders.
Israel claims all of Jerusalem, but the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 Middle East War, as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israel's annexation of the city's eastern sector, and a succession of American administrations have urged Israel not to build there.
Netanyahu's pronouncement was consistent with Israeli policy, yet his sharp tone may embarrass Obama at a moment of vulnerability. Obama is visiting the world's largest Muslim country, and the rebuke may again raise questions in the Muslim world about how much influence the American leader really has on a priority issue.
The disagreement also comes a week after Obama suffered a setback in the midterm elections, which gave Republicans, who are likely to be sympathetic to Netanyahu's point of view, majority control of the House of Representatives. Some Israeli officials and U.S. analysts had predicted before the election that Netanyahu might feel emboldened to push back on Obama if the Democrats fared poorly.
Obama launched a new peace effort Sept. 1, but it has been nearly stalled as the Palestinians refuse to negotiate unless Israel halts construction in the disputed areas. Palestinian leaders contend that the Jewish settlers are taking land whose ownership should be decided in negotiations.
Robert Danin, a former U.S. official and specialist on Arab-Israeli issues, said it may have been politically risky for Netanyahu to oppose the new construction project, since Israelis view such building as fully within their rights.
With Netanyahu planning to meet Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Washington on Thursday, the strong words will not help the U.S. efforts to bring the two sides back to the peace table, said Danin, who is with the Council on Foreign Relations.
"For there to be a deal, the temperature has to come down," he said.
Israel's go-ahead to build 1,300 homes in East Jerusalem met with a storm of disapproval from around the world, including all four members of the diplomatic "quartet" that seeks to promote the Mideast peace talks: the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Russia views the announcement "with most serious concern.… We find it essential that the Israeli party refrain from the declared construction."
Obama's relationship with Netanyahu has gone through alternating periods of warm and cool. Obama was furious with Netanyahu in March, when new construction was announced in East Jerusalem just as Vice President Joe Biden was visiting. In July, Obama warmly welcomed Netanyahu to the White House.
Yet Obama has maintained pressure on the Israeli prime minister like few recent presidents. In September, he called on Netanyahu from the podium of the United Nations General Assembly to halt settlement construction in the name of peace, a plea Netanyahu has so far resisted.
cparsons@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Parsons reported from Jakarta and Richter from Washington. Times staff writer Edmund Sanders in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
“Isn’t that something that would just make your day, to read the headlines on the morning of Nov. 3: ‘We took back that U.S. Senate seat’?” Dan Cronin, chairman of the DuPage County Republicans, hollered to an expo center filled with Republicans.
“Oh my God!” Mr. Cronin went on. “I’d have to lie down! I’m telling you; it would be a remarkable experience.”
More is at stake in the race here than merely the balance of power in the Senate. Senator Roland W. Burris, a Democrat who was appointed to the post and is not seeking election, may hold this seat for the moment, but it remains, in the minds of loyalists of both parties, Mr. Obama’s.
And that is adding a layer of intensity and ferocity — and the attention of the president himself — in the final weeks of a campaign that has been punctuated by unexpected developments.
Representative Mark Steven Kirk, the Republican who has long represented a north suburban Congressional district, and Alexi Giannoulias, the Democrat and Illinois treasurer, remain locked in a close fight, some polls suggest.
A large chunk of voters — 17 percent in one recent Chicago Tribune/WGN television poll — is undecided, despite seemingly endless, harsh television advertising and a constant run of news coverage. To hear some voters tell it, left to decide is a basic question that has taken a central, often ugly, role in this race: Who can one actually believe?
Mr. Kirk, 51, was once seen by some as having an upper hand. He had years of experience and a voting history that could appeal to a state that has, historically, elected moderate Republicans. But then came a string of questions about his descriptions of his own history, and he ended up acknowledging misleading statements about his record as a Naval Reserve intelligence officer.
Despite his relative inexperience, Mr. Giannoulias, 34, has pulled off a statewide election once before, and was expected to benefit from his party alliance. These days, Republicans hold no statewide offices in Illinois, and Democrats control both chambers in the state legislature.
But Mr. Giannoulias’s campaign, too, was upended by events: This year, federal regulators seized the bank his family owned, where he had once been a senior loan officer. Reports that the bank had made loans to people with connections to organized crime did not help. Mr. Giannoulias has insisted that the struggles of his family’s bank were not unlike those of many Americans whose businesses were devastated by the recession.
The questions and revelations have had an effect on the images of both candidates.
“I don’t trust either one of them,” said one voter, Nancy Melin, as she ate lunch Wednesday in downtown Chicago, “so I wouldn’t feel good about voting for either of them.”
When the Chicago Tribune poll, conducted Sept. 24-28, asked which candidate was more honest and trustworthy, the results were mixed: 35 percent said Mr. Giannoulias; 30 percent said Mr. Kirk; 16 percent said neither; and 18 percent did not know. Ms. Melin, who said she often voted for Democrats, said she was considering not voting in this race.
Mr. Obama’s relationship to Mr. Giannoulias has drawn special notice on all sides. Although the White House initially encouraged at least one other Democrat to run for the seat, Mr. Obama is making his second visit home on Mr. Giannoulias’s behalf. On Thursday, he is to appear at two fund-raising events (one is a small dinner party). Next week, Michelle Obama is scheduled to come. And others in the administration have offered encouragement, too; on Saturday, Arne Duncan, the education secretary, played in a basketball tournament here with Mr. Giannoulias and told reporters he was a “big, big fan of Alexi.”
Republicans (who note that Mitt Romney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator Scott P. Brown and others have come here to help Mr. Kirk) often point to Mr. Giannoulias’s ties to the president as a rallying cry for their own candidate and as a way to dismiss Mr. Giannoulias.
Mr. Cronin, for example, offered this description of Mr. Giannoulias before his Republican rally: “A basketball buddy and a pal of Barack Obama, and that’s his résumé, period.”
Republicans, too, are pleased to remind voters that the seat in question was at the center of a corruption scandal that enveloped the former governor, Rod R. Blagojevich, a Democrat. Mr. Blagojevich, who is awaiting a second trial on charges that he tried to sell an appointment to complete Mr. Obama’s Senate term, appointed Mr. Burris.
If voters here are talking about their doubts about the candidates, the candidates are talking about the economy. “Why would we want to put the same people who created this mess in charge and give them a promotion to the United States Senate?” Mr. Giannoulias said in an interview on Wednesday, referring to Congressional Republicans.
Mr. Kirk said he believed the race would turn on the economy. “I’ll give it to you short and sweet,” he told the crowd here. “I’m the candidate who would spend less, borrow less and tax less to fix our economy.”
As if this Senate seat were not wrapped in enough unusual circumstances, there is another one. Voters will be asked to vote twice in this race on Nov. 2: once for the six-year term to start in 2011, and a second time for the few remaining weeks (yes, weeks) of Mr. Obama’s term, which, a court has ruled, must be filled in a simultaneous special election.
Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed reporting from Chicago
