Gibbs stokes Dems' Nov. anxiety

But Democratic strategists are privately grumbling that the White House press secretary gift-wrapped a bludgeon and handed it to the GOP.

“It was the dumbest thing in the world to do,” one major Democratic money-bundler told POLITICO. “Barack Obama doesn’t understand this [election] is a referendum on his agenda.”

Gibbs’ perhaps too-candid remarks about losing the House has exacerbated Democratic anxieties about the prospect of fighting a political war on two fronts, against Republicans and their own White House.

And they privately express concern that President Barack Obama and his aides are willing to sacrifice Democratic seats — and perhaps the majority — to protect Obama’s brand heading into the 2012 election. Gibbs’s remarks are particularly galling, several Democrats say, because they feel that the White House is focused on Senate races and has done too little to help keep the speaker’s gavel in Nancy Pelosi’s hands.

“It’s the difference between stating the obvious and disheartening Democrats and stating the obvious and emboldening Democrats,” said a strategist who is working on 2010 elections. “Guess which he did?”

But even as they criticize his remarks, Democrats aren’t challenging the accuracy of Gibbs’s assertion – they’re just questioning the political wisdom behind his forthcoming answer.

White House spokesman Bill Burton, a former DCCC aide, said there’s a natural tension between the White House, which has to balance the president’s time and energy, and the campaign arms of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses.

“There’s never going to be a situation where a party committee feels that a president of their party is doing enough,” Burton said. “That’s why the DCCC is so successful. They’ve got such an aggressive committee and they’re always asking us to do as much as possible.”

Indeed, White House aides say Gibbs’s remarks have been overplayed. One aide said the media is reporting on “a piece of what he said” rather than “the arc” of his argument.

House Democrats have been trying to strike the delicate balance of motivating their troops to work hard in November without arming the GOP by saying they may lose the House. Perhaps Gibbs was simply trying to match that balance. But his remarks sounded off the mark to some Democrats.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) recalibrated Gibbs’s words a bit, framing them as a concession of the “mathematical” possibility that Republicans could win the House rather than the more charged observation that there are “enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.”

“What [Gibbs’] comments highlight is the choice people will be making,” Van Hollen said. “To the extent it got people to focus on the choice, it crystallized what’s at stake.”

But strategists insisted privately that Gibbs’s initial remarks, made on Meet the Press Sunday, rubbed salt in their wounds. And on Monday, he poured in the rest of the shaker, standing by what he’d said even as Republicans rushed to let candidates, donors, voters and the media know that the White House thinks the GOP’s got a good shot of taking over the chamber come January.

“I did what is maybe uncommon in this town, and yesterday I opened my mouth and stated the obvious. I do not believe that you are all now scurrying around to cover this election markedly different based on my having said that there are a number of seats that are in play,” Gibbs said Monday from the White House podium in response to a question about his Sunday remarks.

Political handicappers say Gibbs was actually on the mark in terms of his prognostication – that control of the House is up for grabs in November.

“Right now our projection is Republican gains of 25 to 30 [seats] but there is certainly potential” for a flip in control, said Nathan Gonzales, political editor of the Rothenberg Report, where analysts are working this week to develop a new overview of House races. “The number is only likely to get better for Republicans. There is no sign that the trajectory of the election is changing.”

Republicans would need a net gain of 39 seats to win control of the House, as Democrats currently hold a 255 to 178 advantage with a vacancy on each side of the aisle.

David Wasserman, who calls House races for the Cook Political Report, said “the House is on a knife’s edge today.”

“There was a long time last year, spilling into this year, when privately Democrats were alarmed or expressed outrage that anyone thought the House was in play. Now Democrats have come around to that privately, and they’re beginning to publicly,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean Gibbs’s messaging sits well with fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill, where there’s a standing frustration with the White House’s political efforts on behalf of House Democrats.

“You give the Republicans a huge fundraising boost and a momentum boost coming back into session” after the July 4th recess, said one Democratic campaign strategist.

The bundler said he’d try to raise money for House Democrats with this simple message to other donors: “The White House just threw us under the bus. Please send money.”

Republicans were happy to blast out Gibbs comments on Monday.

“The fact that the White House is acknowledging that there is even a possibility they could lose their majority in the House confirms that this election has turned into a national referendum,” said Ken Spain, communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Republican challengers are singing from the same song sheet and talking about the three issues that are plaguing this administration: jobs, deficits and debt.”

Spain had slung a copy of Gibbs’ Monday remarks at the White House briefing into reporters’ inboxes by mid-afternoon.

Here’s the full Gibbs quote from Meet the Press: “I think there’s no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control. There’s no doubt about that. This will depend on strong campaigns by Democrats. And again, I think we’ve got to take the issues to them. You know, are–do you want to put in, in to the speakership of the House a guy who thinks that the, the financial calamity is, is tantamount to an ant? The guy who’s the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Joe Barton, started his congressional testimony of the CEO of BP by apologizing, not to the people in the gulf, but to the CEO.”

Democrats want to play up the part about Boehner being a ruinous House speaker, but the message that the House is in play and that it is up to House Democrats to defend their own majority landed like a punch to the gut on Capitol Hill.

The tensions between House Democrats and the White House will likely bounce between the political and legislative arenas.

The situation grew so combustible just before the July 4th recess that Appropriations Chairman Dave Obey insisted a White House threat to veto his education spending package backfired.

“We got more votes tonight because of that than we would have had otherwise,” Obey told POLITICO after accusing Education Secretary Arne Duncan of “whining” over the plan to cut $800 million in “Race to the Top” funds to help offset the $10 billion to avoid teacher layoffs around the country.

Whether House Democrats’ anger actually translated into voting against President Barack Obama, Obey’s willingness to publicly castigate the administration — and to suggest it has lost its juice on the Hill — is emblematic of a House Democratic Caucus that is furious with its partners on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“I’ve never seen our members more angry at the White House than they are right now,” a senior House Democratic aide told POLITICO over the recess.

In a scene first reported by POLITICO and later in the New York Times magazine, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and several of her colleagues in the House Democratic leadership fumed to White House political guru David Axelrod at a private meeting in April about the president’s penchant for beating up on “Washington” but not differentiating between Democrats and Republicans.

More recently, Democratic strategists have begun pointing to Obama’s frequent campaign trips to help Senate candidates – like his stops in Missouri for Robin Carnahan and in Nevada for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last week.

As three separate Democratic strategists ruefully noted in interviews Monday, Obama hasn’t done an event for an individual House Democrat yet.

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