Now that health care reform is law, what's the next big issue? Same as it was a year ago. It's back to the economy, stupid.

Washington was fixated on the health care debate for 10 months, but the public wasn't. To voters, the top issue has always been jobs. What has happened to the economic issue while Washington was preoccupied with health care? Not much, as it turns out.

Things are a little less bleak. Just before President Obama took office in January 2009, only 13 percent of Americans thought that the economy was in good shape, according to a CNN poll. That number rose to 20 percent last June, when the health care debate opened. It has barely budged since then. The current assessment: 21 percent think that the economy is in good shape.

The latest employment news is encouraging. The economy added 162,000 jobs in March, the highest monthly gain in three years. But 48,000 of the new employees were census workers, and those jobs won't last beyond this year. Overall, the unemployment rate remains unchanged at 9.7 percent.

The Democratic response? The glass is half full. "We are beginning to turn the corner," Obama said on April 2 in North Carolina, cautioning that "it will take time to achieve the strong and sustained job growth that we need."

The Republican response? The glass is half empty. "Sustained job creation is the only economic indicator that matters to the American people," Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told The Washington Post.

The Pew Research Center came up with a jarring finding. A year ago, 39 percent of Americans reported that someone in their household had been unemployed and looking for work during the previous year. That number is now up to 54 percent. It's even higher among Democrats (57 percent), low-income Americans (66 percent), and young people (70 percent). They are all part of Obama's political base.

Ever since the Clinton recovery in the late 1990s, Democrats have held an edge over Republicans on managing the economy, and they have history going for them. With one exception, every recession in the past 50 years, including the current one, started under a Republican president. The exception was 1980. Democrat Jimmy Carter paid a price for that, including a stiff challenge within his own party.

The CNN poll has also come up with a startling finding. Democrats have lost their edge on the economy. In the March CNN poll, the public gave Republicans a narrow lead on the question of which party would do a better job of handling the economy (48 percent to 45 percent). That's the first time since 2003 that a majority has not given Democrats the advantage. The party cannot expect to stem its midterm losses unless there are clear signs -- not mixed signals -- that jobs are coming back.

Another surprising finding in the CNN poll: For the first time in at least 25 years, a majority of Americans say that economic growth should be a higher priority than protecting the environment (51 percent to 45 percent). In 19 polls taken since 1984, the public had never before put the economy ahead of the environment -- not even in 1992, when the nation was obsessed with "the economy, stupid."

As it happens, Obama has been getting his highest ratings on the environment. But how many people care? The environment ranks near the bottom when people are asked what issue will be most important to them in voting for Congress this year. Just 2 percent cited it in the CNN poll. Of course, almost no one is much worried about terrorism right now, either (3 percent). The economy is just about the whole agenda.

That situation made it politically less risky for the president to announce his decision last week to ex-pand offshore oil drilling. He described the move as "part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy."

How is offshore drilling going to do that? "The only way this transition will succeed is if it strengthens our economy in the short term and long term," Obama said. In other words, first we must have an economic rebound, even if that means burning more fossil fuels. Then we can turn our attention to solving other problems, such as the burning of fossil fuels.

This article appeared in the Saturday, April 10, 2010 edition of National Journal.

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