Three weeks before the election, Barack Obama is going through something of a dress rehearsal for his first 100 days in office.

Buoyed by a slew of recent polls showing that the economy has boosted Obama (Ill.) and Democrats in the House and Senate, Democratic leaders in Congress are aggressively posturing to steamroll Republicans over the economy in the coming weeks.

In the wake of its devastating 2004 electoral losses, the Democratic Party was scrambling for its identity. After Democrats grabbed control of Congress two years later, the faces of the party became House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Now, following a bitter primary and concerns raised in Democratic circles about their candidate’s experience, the party is sold on Obama — much more than it was on Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) four years ago.

And while they have made it clear that they want Obama in the driver’s seat, congressional Democrats are providing the horsepower for a potential $300 billion economic stimulus bill that could be five times the size of the package approved by the House in September. They’re calling it an “economic recovery” plan instead of a stimulus, and would fill it with Democratic priorities ranging from an extension of unemployment benefits to infrastructure spending.

Some aides are even floating trade-offs that might sweeten the pot for Senate Republicans and President Bush, including the Colombia free trade agreement, long seen as a possible lame-duck item.

Whether Democrats actually intend to even introduce a stimulus bill before the next Congress and president take office is an open question. Even with a Democratic landslide in November, moving a new stimulus bill could be difficult given the Democrats’ narrow 51-49 edge in the Senate and Bush’s veto power.

“Economic, not political, conditions will drive the pace of another economic recovery package,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), the assistant to the Speaker. “It could be in a week, it could be in a month, it could be in three months. Right now we need to let the $700 billion get to work, and we need to hold these hearings to find out what exactly the best way forward is from here.”

Pelosi has said the House will hold a number of hearings on the economic recovery package throughout November, but aides said it was still up in the air whether the majority would push for passage of a bill in the 110th Congress.

Still, Democrats believe merely talking now about doing a stimulus or economic recovery plan in the post-election session boosts chances for Obama and congressional Democrats at the polls by highlighting what they say are the GOP’s failures to regulate the financial markets and ambivalence toward supporting measures for the middle class.

“Do we really think that the president’s just going to sign this on his way out the door?” said one Democratic aide. “Of course not. And it would not be wise of us to hand him that gun and then let him shoot us with it.

“This is all window dressing and an election strategy,” the aide continued. “It shows that Democrats are taking this issue seriously. And it sets Obama up for a huge victory right out of the gate. Whatever needs to happen after Nov. 4 won’t be decided until after Nov. 4.”

Republicans, meanwhile, are scrambling.

Struggling to keep their losses in the House and Senate as minimal as possible even as economic problems have boosted Democratic momentum, GOP leaders have shifted from opposing the idea of a stimulus bill to opposing the kind of stimulus Democrats are urging.