Washington ? Just a year after celebrating Barack Obama’s inauguration, despondent Democrats on Saturday heard from their party leader who urged optimism in the face of Republicans’ strong challenge to their congressional dominance.

The president said political leaders must plot their way forward to November with an understanding of the economic difficulties Americans face.

“I understand their frustration. You understand it as well,” Obama said.

At its winter meeting, a defiant Democratic Party worked to project a message of strength even as loyalists acknowledged the prospect of several defeats in November. The party that controls the White House typically loses seats during midterm elections at an average rate of 28 net House seats. President Bill Clinton, the last Democratic commander in chief, lost control of Congress in his first term and Democrats privately are predicting it could happen again.

Obama, looking to write his own history, warned fellow Democrats that “we have to acknowledge that change can’t come quickly enough.”

A government report on Friday put the unemployment rate at 9.7 percent. Distrust of Washington has grown and spurred an anti-Washington sentiment that sent scores of activists to a “tea party” convention in Nashville on the same day. Another sign of the tone: Republican Sen. Scott Brown won a special election to take the seat of the late, liberal Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

Democrats also lost gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey that had been in Democratic hands.

Obama sought to energize Democratic loyalists against what he called “the other party.” He urged Democrats to work with their Republican counterparts.

“We can’t solve all of our problems alone,” Obama said, as the audience sat in silence.

While Republicans have stood in solid opposition to the president’s proposed overhaul of health care, Obama insisted he wasn’t willing to abandon the domestic priority that has consumed months of his agenda and has fallen short of victory, for now.

“Let me be clear: I am not going to walk away from health care insurance reform,” Obama said, bringing the audience in the hotel ballroom to their feet.

Republicans, though, made clear the Democrats’ current health proposals must be scrapped.

“If they get past this arrogant phase that they have been stuck in about a year, if they can work their way past that and concentrate on the real problem which is the cost, we are willing to look at it,” said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “To work together, first you have to do it on a bipartisan basis.”

Job creation

Meanwhile, Republicans sparred with Obama in their Saturday media addresses over proposals to create jobs, further evidence of the difficulty of bipartisan solutions to the nation’s pressing problems.

Obama pushed Congress to use $30 billion that had been set aside to bail out Wall Street to start a new program that provides loans to small businesses, which the White House calls the engine for job growth. Republicans, meanwhile, taunted Obama with a familiar refrain: Where are the jobs the president promised in exchange for the billions of dollars already spent?

The barb came a day after the government reported an unexpected decline in the unemployment rate, from 10 percent to 9.7 percent. It was the first drop in seven months but offered little consolation for the 8.4 million jobs that have vanished since the recession began.

In the weekly GOP address, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas chided Obama for proposing a 2011 budget last week that would increase spending, taxes and the national debt.

The Republican attack came even as key Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are working on a bipartisan jobs bill. The senators hope to unveil legislation as early as Monday that would provide tax breaks to businesses that hire unemployed workers, extend unemployment payments for those whose benefits have run out, and renew a program that offers the jobless a subsidy for health insurance premiums.