The pivot begins today at 11:40 am with remarks from the White House.

Via Fox News:

The Obama administration has set the stage for a push that could rekindle cries of class warfare — calling for renewed long-term unemployment benefits, a minimum wage increase and a campaign against what Democrats call “income inequality.”

Ahead of his multi-week, holiday vacation in Hawaii, President Obama pushed Congress to move forward on extending federal unemployment benefits that weren’t included in the budget deal Senate Democrats and House Republicans struck to fund the federal government for the next two years. The White House has scheduled an East Room event on Tuesday in which the president will appear with people who lost that insurance.

Before the break, Obama called on Congress to follow the lead of 14 states that hiked their minimum wages and do the same for the federal wage.

“We know that there are airport workers, and fast-food workers, and nurse assistants, and retail salespeople who work their tails off and are still living at or barely above poverty,” the president said during a Dec. 4 speech in Washington. “And that’s why it’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that in real terms right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office.”

The president went on to suggest that economic inequality, brought on partially by the current federal minimum wage, is a drag on the American way of life.

Critics suggest the president is turning to populist themes — and stoking the class warfare debate — in an effort to pivot away from the troubled rollout of his signature health care law. Far fewer people than projected have enrolled in the federal health care exchange, and one official over the weekend played down the administration’s goal of 7 million enrollees. Talk of ladders of opportunity and a strengthened middle class would create a stark contrast to the badgering the White House took on health care to end 2013.