Enter
didates in the most competitive
states want President Barack
Obama anywhere near them.
POLITICO spoke with nearly every incumbent up for reelection
and aspiring Democratic Senate candidates across the country, but only a handful gave an
unequivocal “yes” when asked
whether they wanted Obama to
come campaign with them.
“I don’t care to have him campaign for me,” said Sen. Mark
Begich (D-Alaska), citing a number of issues on which he is at
odds with the Obama White
House, such as opening up the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
for drilling, and also something
having to do with timber industry permitting. Not mentioned
is Begich’s stance on Social Security, which is also at odds
with Obama’s — Begich wants to
join an effort to expand it, while
Obama wants to cut it through
chained CPI. That’s probably because the notion of a vulnerable
senator distancing himself from
the president for being not liberal enough returns a “404 error”
when it’s fed into this paradigm.
But I digress.
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
02.16.14
The thing I find most compelling about the “people don’t want
the president to campaign with
them story” is the unanswered
question: does this strategy work?
Let’s recall that in 2010, Sen.
Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) staged
her own “break with Obama” opera, demanding that he “push
back against people in our own
party that want extremes.” In
short order, her campaign web-
If there’s a Democratic
politician out there who
can legitimately say that
the effort made to distance
himself from Obama stopped
his opponent from trying
to tie them together, by all
means, let me know!”
site filed a report titled, “Lincoln
challenges Obama on liberal ‘extremes.’” That was subsequently
picked up by Politico. Hoo, boy,
you guys, Blanche Lincoln was
straight up putting distance between herself and the president.
And now she’s known as ex-Sen.
Blanche Lincoln.
Hey, she was just following a
path well-trod by others. In the