I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment from Atrios. The economy and jobs are universally recognized as the biggest short-term issues for voters, and what are Democrats saying?

Judging by all the emails I get from various campaigns and party organizations, the Dem plan for the campaign is to run against social security privatization and then come December vote to cut benefits and raise the retirement age.

I had a conversation at my local Drinking Liberally about this last night, and the very difficult place Democrats find themselves in, running in opposition when they run the country. What are they proposing? What message about the 2011-2012 Congress are they putting forward? Saying “Republicans want to cut your Social Security benefits and privatize the program, and we’ll never privatize Social Security!” is completely unfulfilling and untrustworthy, and the fact that the stimulus expanded GDP and created jobs in the past says nothing about the future, when its impact will wane. Despite everything already done, the economy is suffering. What’s your plan?

As I said in a previous post this morning, from a political standpoint, you would think that Democrats and the White House would create a jobs platform and hold a referendum on it. They may be edging closer in that direction.

The president also is considering an initiative that would match public and private investments in transportation infrastructure projects. He hinted at the idea repeatedly, without details, during a multicity trip last week before he left on vacation.

“We need 21st-century infrastructure — not just roads and bridges, but faster Internet access and high-speed rail — projects that can lead to hundreds of thousands of new, private sector jobs,” Mr. Obama said in Seattle.

Yet when Congress returns from its summer break in September, all such efforts will hit a wall of Republican opposition.

That would be the reason to hold a referendum on a jobs agenda, from a political standpoint. It would at least stand as a counterpoint to the nihilism from the right.

If you can get the small business lending bill through the Senate in September, fine. But I’m talking about an actual jobs agenda, in whatever form you want to make it. It’s not like there aren’t literally hundreds of thousands of infrastructure options available. Just picking one at random, check out this thermal solar plant approved in California:

California regulators on Wednesday approved a license for the nation’s first large-scale solar thermal power plant in two decades.

The licensing of the 250-megawatt Beacon Solar Energy Project after a two-and-a-half-year environmental review comes as several other big solar farms are set to receive approval from the California Energy Commission in the next month.

“I hope this is the first of many more large-scale solar projects we will permit,” said Jeffrey D. Byron, a member of the California Energy Commission, at a hearing in Sacramento on Wednesday. “This is exactly the type of project we want to see.”

You could pool together funding for some of these large-scale renewable projects as part of a 21st-century energy agenda. Or you can do a “1 million rail cars” bill, or a mass program to fix bridges and water treatment systems, or really whatever. What’s important is that there’s something substantive as a counterpoint.

But Atrios may have nailed this: “probably, they think if we give the economy another F.U. everything will be ok. They might be right. But 6 months is a long time…”