'2010 is gone for Democrats'
Barack Obama is shown. | Reuters Photo The midterm elections this November will be seen as a report card on President Obama. | Reuters Close By ROGER SIMON | 9/14/10 4:48 AM EDT
2010 Is ‘Gone,’ Says Big-Time Dem
“He cannot save 2010,” the big-time Democrat is saying of Barack Obama. “It is gone. He must now concentrate on saving 2012. But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”
In my experience, the big-time Democrat has hardly ever been wrong. He does not dislike President Obama. On the contrary, like most big-time Democrats, he worked hard for his election in 2008 and would much rather see Democrats hold onto Congress this Nov. 2 than lose.
He just doesn’t think it’s going to happen. A few months ago, he told me Democrats could win the House in a squeaker and also retain the Senate. We talked again a few days ago, and things had changed.
“There is going to be a total wipeout, and it is totally going to be in Obama’s lap,” he said. “He should drop plans for Congress and plan for Nov. 3 and what he does next.”
The big-time Democrat appreciates the unfairness of this. We always go around saying, “all politics is local,” until it comes to the midterm elections, when politics becomes a national referendum on the sitting president.
David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager in 2008, said on “Meet the Press With David Gregory” on Sept. 5 that “our House candidates are running great localized campaigns, really focusing on turnout and making that a choice between two individuals.”
In other words, Democrats can do great as long as the election is not about Obama.
Good luck with that. Obama was not a hyperpartisan figure when he ran for president, but now, as the de facto head of his party, he must travel across the country beating the drum for every Democrat — or at least those who will have him. And this election is largely about Obama and his successes and failures in his first two years in office.
Which is the problem. “You know the president is in trouble when people in the White House go around saying, ‘If the public only knew this guy!’” the Democrat said. “Obama has been in the public eye for three years, and people are saying they don’t know him? Whose fault is that? The public’s?”
Others say all this is baloney, the same kind of panic the Obama campaign experienced and overcame in the primaries and general election of 2008.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42100.html#ixzz0zXWuriRy
