Democrats are expressing growing alarm about President Barack Obama's re-election prospects and, in interviews, are openly acknowledging anxiety about the White House's ability to strengthen the president's standing over the next 14 months.

Elected officials and party leaders at all levels said their worries have intensified as the economy has displayed new signs of weakness. They said the likelihood of a highly competitive 2012 race is increasing as the Republican field, once dismissed by many Democrats as too inexperienced and conservative to pose a serious threat, has started narrowing to two leading candidates, Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, who have executive experience and messages built around job creation.

And in a campaign cycle in which Democrats had entertained hopes of reversing losses from last year's midterm elections, some in the party fear that Obama's troubles could reverberate down the ballot into congressional, state and local races.

"In my district, the enthusiasm for him has mostly evaporated," said Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore. "There is tremendous discontent with his direction."

The president's economic address last week offered a measure of solace to discouraged Democrats by employing an assertive and scrappy style that many supporters complain has been absent for the past year as he has struggled to rise above Washington gridlock.

Several Democrats suggested that he watch a tape of the jobs speech over and over and use it as a guide until the election.

But a survey of two dozen Democratic officials found a palpable sense of concern that transcended a single week of ups and downs.

The conversations signaled a change in mood from only a few months ago, when Democrats widely believed that Obama's path to re-election, while challenging, was secure.

There is little cause for immediate optimism, with polls showing Obama at one of the lowest points of his presidency.

His own economic advisers concede that the unemployment rate, now 9.1 percent, is unlikely to drop substantially over the next year, creating a daunting obstacle to re-election.

Liberals have grown frustrated with some of his actions, like the decision this month to drop tougher air-quality standards.

And polling suggests that the president's yearlong effort to reclaim the political center has so far yielded little in the way of additional support from the moderates and independents who tend to decide presidential elections.

"The alarms have already gone off in the Democratic grass roots," said Robert Zimmerman, a member of the Democratic National Committee from New York, who hopes the president's jobs plan can be a turning point.

"If the Obama administration hasn't heard them, they should check the wiring of their alarm system."

At a gathering of the Democratic National Committee in Chicago this weekend, some party leaders sounded upbeat after they toured the Obama campaign headquarters. But others expressed anxiety that Obama's accomplishments were not being conveyed loudly enough to ordinary people, that Republican lawmakers were making it impossible for him to get more done, and that Obama's conciliatory approach might be translating to some voters as weakness.

"Now that they're slapping him in the side of the face, he's coming back," said William George, a committee member from Pennsylvania.

"He needs to start stomping his foot and pounding the desk."

At the White House and at Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago, officials bristled at the critiques, which they dismissed as familiar intraparty carping and second-guessing that would give way to unity and enthusiasm once the nation is facing a clear choice between the president and the Republican nominee.

Jim Messina, the campaign manager for the president's re-election, said the criticism was largely a "Washington conversation" that did not match up with the on-the-ground enthusiasm for Obama among his network of supporters. Yet even without a primary challenger, the campaign purposefully started its effort early to allow concerns from supporters to be aired.

To reassure nervous Democrats, the president's campaign aides are traveling the country with PowerPoint presentations that spell out Obama's path to re-election.

Their pitch is that Obama's appeal has grown in traditionally Republican states like Arizona, where there are fast-growing Latino populations, and that Republicans have alienated independent voters with "extreme" positions on popular programs like Medicare.

"We always knew 2011 was, in part, a conversation with our supporters and a time to tell the story to our base to make sure they understand what he has gotten done," Messina said.

"Our supporters are reasonable and need to be reminded about the things we've done." He added: "No one is calling me up and yelling. They are people saying: 'How can we get the word out? How do we better talk about it?' "

For Obama's strongest supporters, his jobs speech on Thursday night to a joint session of Congress seemed to affirm their belief that after a rough patch, the White House had seized the upper hand, however temporarily, in both substantive and political terms.

After ceding much of the debate over the economy to Republicans, they said, Obama had framed next year's election as a struggle between a president with a plan for creating jobs and reducing the deficit and a Republican Party that would rather score political points and adhere slavishly to ideological positions than address the needs of Americans.

Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland, who attended the speech, described a changed president, no longer so reluctant to be outwardly aggressive.

"He seemed liberated for the fight and very confident in his own skin," O'Malley said.

But given the risk of voters' locking in judgments that Obama's presidency has failed to address the economy adequately or to deliver on its promise of changing Washington, many Democrats said that both the speech and Obama's change in tone had been long overdue.

At the Democratic National Committee meeting in Chicago, Mannie Rodriguez, a committee member from Colorado, said Democrats needed to find a new blast of energy – something to remind them of what they felt in 2008 when Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change.

"We need to work more on the message," Rodriguez said, adding that much of Obama's challenge stems from a group of Republicans who "simply say no" to all of his advances.

"We have to re-energize people and get them back to the party."

For all the hand-wringing among Democrats, some party leaders say Obama has time to reverse his slipping fortunes – but not much.

"I think there's an uneasy feeling, but it's a little early for an ulcer to develop," said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia.

"Obviously, the dark cloud over everything is the economic performance."

DeFazio recalled attending a dozen or so town-hall-style meetings recently in his district, a slice of western Oregon that Obama carried in 2008 by 11 percentage points. DeFazio said party loyalists had bluntly said they were reconsidering their support.

"I have one heck of a lot of Democrats saying, 'I voted for him before, don't know if I can do it again,' " he said.

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