A fair number of Democratic congressmen are rightfully worried about joining the ranks of the jobless. They're up for re-election in only 11 months, which means they'll be forced to campaign in a hostile political environment. When the unemployment rate hovers in the neighborhood of double digits, voters typically lash out at the party that controls the White House - as Ronald Reagan discovered in 1982, when double-digit joblessness cost the Republicans 26 House seats.

And it's doubtful that Barack Obama said anything yesterday to calm Democratic nerves.

At his job creation forum (which probably won't spark the creation of many jobs), he stressed mainly that "our resources are limited" - a reference to the deep budget deficit, to the spending commitments for big-ticket, over-the-horizon domestic programs, and to the new undertow of Afghanistan. Indeed, this Obama remark could easily have been uttered by a Republican president: "While I believe the government has a critical role in creating the conditions for economic growth, ultimately true economic recovery is only going to come from the private sector." And even though House Democrats insist that creating jobs should be the top priority - and that $100 billion in leftover bank-bailout money can be tapped for that purpose - Obama's budget team wants to spend that money on reducing the deficit instead.

By the way, the new jobless rate, announced this morning, is 10 percent, a drop of two-tenths of a point. In translation, we only lost 11,000 jobs in November (the lowest monthly loss since the recession began in December 2007). Democratic lawmakers probably won't take much solace in the new stat. What's more important is that Obama said so little yesterday about what he would do to create jobs. The forum mostly seemed like an opportunity for Obama to show that he cared. (Shades of George H. W. Bush, stumping in recession-plagued New Hampshire early in the election of 1992, reading off an index card: "Message: I Care." Look where that got him, and his party.)  

It's easy to see how relations between Obama and the elected Democrats are going to be further strained in 2010. He's playing a long game, taking measured steps that presumably will help spark a job-creating economic recovery within the next few years - coinciding, of course, with his own re-election race in 2012 (the Reagan model in 1984). But Democratic lawmakers are forced to play a short game; all House members are up for renewal next year. As many as three dozen Democrats will be playing defense in competitive House districts. On the Senate side, five or six Democratic incumbents will be seeking new terms in competitive states. For these politicians, talking about a long-term recovery won't cut it. Unless they can point to real job growth in 2010, some of them may well be toast.

The warning bells were sounded earlier this week, by Democracy Corps, a survey firm helmed by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg and message maven James Carville. When the likes of Greenberg and Carville are saying that things are bad for Democrats, surely it must be true: "The slow recovery and continued job losses, combined with Wall Street bailouts, big bonuses, government takeovers deficits and possible gridlock are an ugly brew...This pessimism is driving an anti-incumbent mood that is keeping ratings for everyone in Washington down, but is having a (disproportionate) impact on Democrats as the party in power."

Greenberg, who polls regularly, found that the Democrats' favorability rating has dropped by 17 percentage points since June - to the point where a thin plurality of the voters now believe (for the first time in a Greenberg poll since 2002) that the Republicans would do a better job on the economy. The fine print suggests that the GOP has gained that edge mostly by default, but no matter. Even if that verdict turns out to be ephemeral, it's still a serious slap at the majority party and a key reading of the current mood.

For elected Democrats, it potentially gets worse. Sixty-two percent of the voters say they would be less inclined to support their incumbent Democratic congressman if the jobless rate next autumn is still north of 10 percent with no foreseeable likelihood of a steady drop. (These voters wouldn't necessarily defect to the Republican challenger; rather, they'd be more likely to simply stay home. Typically, in midterm elections, the party that generates less enthusiasm is the party that loses.)

It's increasingly clear that the Democratic base and the Democratic president are not necessarily on the same page. Whereas Obama apparently has little interest in pushing for bold job-creation measures, that's precisely what Democratic voters are asking for. According to the latest Greenberg poll, 83 percent favor a jobs-creation plan over a deficit-reduction plan in order to get Americans back to work. Indeed, House Democratic leaders are working on a jobs bill right now (although the proposals therein are far more modest than New Deal-style job creation); they're hoping to debate it publicly later this month, so that voters at least can see that they're trying to do something.

The problem for elected Democrats, however, is that Obama is most preoccupied with health care reform and Afghanistan. If voters perceive that Obama is too focused on the far horizon, and insufficiently focused on pulling people off the unemployment lines, many of these Democratic incumbents could wind up next November as collateral damage.