{mosads} The president’s staff has taken somewhat unorthodox approaches in pushing for the jobs package. In addition to the Twitter and Facebook appeals, the White House has created a blog to push the program, and distributed the office phone numbers of senators wavering in their support. On Twitter, the administration has been promoting the #JobsNow and #PassThisBill hashtags to build support.
Still, the moves may be as much to shore up support within the party – some Democrats looked poised to voted against bringing the bill to the floor Tuesday – and aid the president’s election campaign as truly advocating the bill. The complete jobs package looks poised for defeat in the Senate Tuesday evening, with officials in the White House saying they anticipated not winning the 60 votes needed to break a Republican filibuster. The White House has said that they plan to work with Senate Democrats to break the bill into smaller pieces that have better chance at legislative success.