Scott Spiegel

President Obama’s strategy for helping fellow Democrats win in the 2010 midterm elections is apparently to campaign against George W. Bush.

At a fundraiser two weeks ago, Obama declared of Republicans’ desire to take back leadership of Congress, “After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back.  No!  You can’t drive.  We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch.  We just got the car out.”

Emory University political science professor Merle Black recently characterized voters’ likely reaction to Obama’s emerging campaign strategy: “If you’re the leader of a large corporation and you’re in power for a year and a half and you start off a meeting with your shareholders by blaming your predecessor, that wouldn’t go over very well.”

Now, why do you suppose Obama wouldn’t have any idea how the leader of a corporation should behave?  Wait—it’s on the tip of my tongue…  I know!  Do community organizers have actual responsibilities?

Perhaps at one point Obama intended to assist other Democrats by trumpeting his own record in office, a gambit that was based on the assumption he would whisk Senators and Representatives into power via the same sweeping electoral coattails he possessed before people saw him actually doing something besides campaigning.

The results over the past six months of Democratic candidates’ riding Obama’s gravy train seem to have dissuaded him of the wisdom of that approach.

In last November’s off-year gubernatorial elections, Obama campaigned vociferously for John Corzine in New Jersey and Creigh Deeds in Virginia, including making multiple appearances with them at campaign rallies, and failed to help either one get elected—and possibly hurt both.

Ditto for The Grim Reaper’s efforts to facilitate the election of Martha Coakley to Ted Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts to save the 60th Senate vote for his signature health care bill.

Three weeks ago, incumbent Republican Senator from Utah Bob Bennett, who voted for the unpopular bank bailout that Bush instituted and Obama supported, failed to win his party’s primary nomination at the state GOP convention.

Two weeks ago, 14-term incumbent Democratic Representative from West Virginia Alan Mollohan, who voted for ObamaCare and was chastised by his Democratic opponent for having done so, lost his party’s primary election.

In contrast to the efforts he made for Corzine, Deeds, and Coakley, Obama tried just tossing his endorsement to Arlen Specter in Specter’s primary bid, and letting grassroots group Organizing for America do the dirty work of campaigning for Specter, but that didn’t help, either.

Pennsylvania Democrat Mark Critz ran for John Murtha’s seat on a platform opposing the following: ObamaCare, cap-and-trade, a national sales tax similar to Obama’s proposed Value Added Tax, gun control, abortion, and efforts to derail Arizona’s immigration law—i.e., what one might term the “Polar Opposite of Obama Platform”—and beat a similarly conservative Republican last week in a district with twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

Last Saturday, Republican Charles Djou won a vacant House seat by running on an explicitly anti-Obama, pro-Tea Party platform in a special election in Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District—the district where Obama grew up—thus becoming the first Republican Representative from Hawaii in almost 20 years.

Meanwhile, many Congressmen up for reelection this November seem less than thrilled at the prospect of a visit from Barack “Kiss of Death” Obama.

In a subtly titled article called “Freshmen Run Away From Obama,” CQ Politics cites freshman Pennsylvania Representative Kathy Dahlkemper: “‘You have to be an independent, no matter what…’  Dahlkemper said that while she would be ‘very happy to welcome’ Obama to her district, she didn’t know how much of a help or a hindrance he would be.  ‘I just think we don’t quite know yet where his popularity is…  I’m much less concerned about who’s going to come in and campaign for me.’”

In everyday language, this political-speak translates as, “Obama had better stay the hell away from my district this year.”

CQ Politics also quotes freshman Colorado Representative Betsey Markey as saying that “she didn’t think it would make much difference either way if the president stumped in her district.  ‘It’s always an honor when the president makes an offer to visit.  But this is a Colorado race.’”  In normal people-talk, this means “Please, Obama, I’m begging you—don’t put on your fake cowboy hat and visit the Rocky Mountains this fall.”

Thus, the growing preference among candidates of both parties who actually face voters this fall seems to be to campaign, not against George Bush, but against Barack Obama.

This whole turn of events leads me to the seemingly absurd but actually logical conclusion that Obama’s best hope in 2012 is to find a way to run against… the first term of President Obama.  Why not?  It sort of worked for Clinton in 1996.

At least when Obama throws himself under the bus, he’ll be able to do it gently.

 Print This Post

Related articles by Zemanta

• No, This Isn’t an “Anti-Incumbent” Year (realclearpolitics.com)
• GOP wins House seat in Obama’s Hawaii home district (usatoday.com)
• Obama’s Primary Test (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Is the Tea Party on a roll? | Sasha Abramsky (guardian.co.uk)
• Democrats Weigh Value of an Obama Endorsement (usnews.com)

Senator Arlen Specter was a registered Democrat in Pennsylvania from the age of 21 to 35.  Like any sensible person, he became a Republican in his 30s, even though he switched parties not so much to suit his changing political philosophy as to be able to challenge an incumbent Democrat for the job of district attorney in Philadelphia in 1965.

A funny thing happened when Senator Specter turned 79 last year: he decided that his 21- to 35-year-old political self had been wiser than his 35- to 79-year-old self.  (Given his voting record for most of his Senate career, it’s hard to quibble with this point.)

Arlen Spectacle (as Mark Levin calls him) categorically stated in March 2009, “To eliminate any doubt, I am a Republican, and I am running for reelection in 2010 as a Republican on the Republican ticket.”  A month later, after genuine conservative Pat Toomey had thrown his hat into the ring for the Republican nomination, Specter announced that, to eliminate any doubt, he was a Democrat, and was running for reelection in 2010 as a Democrat on the Democratic ticket.

Specter inarguably changed parties to avoid a repeat of his close race in 2004 with Toomey, whom Specter beat with a measly 51% of the vote, despite the advantages of incumbency and overwhelming support from the national and state party establishments, including President George W. Bush and fellow Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.  As early as April 2009, just three months into Obama’s presidency, Specter must have sensed that the burgeoning anti-incumbent mood would smother him by the 2010 primaries, and so he deserted the GOP.

Arlen “Act Like a Lady” Specter claims he didn’t leave the party—the party left him.

It’s funny how the exact same thing recently occurred to that paragon of political integrity, Charlie “Lincoln” Crist of Florida, who just happened to be down in the polls to Marco Rubio before he decided his newly evolving political ideology compelled him to become an Independent.

And it’s a bit funny that Specter used the exact same line to explain his own party-hopping move back in 1965.  As the Boston Herald quoted him on the campaign trail, “I didn’t leave the Democratic Party…  The party left me.”

The Senator’s party affiliation isn’t the only thing he’s flip-flopped on.  In May 2009, The Sphincter (Monica Crowley’s nickname for him, not mine—honest!) was asked whether he supported a government-run public option in Congress’s health care overhaul bill, and insisted he did not.  By July, when it looked as though momentum were on the side of the public option, he was for it.

Specter voted in favor of pro-union leadership card check legislation in 2007; then announced he was against it in 2009; then, after switching parties, announced he was in favor of it again.

The Philadelphia Enquirer’s Dick Polman summarizes Benedict Arlen’s vast matrix of flip-floppery in recent years: “He has seemingly been everywhere, which arguably leaves him nowhere.  He says he voted for Bush-Cheney and McCain-Palin… but says he’ll vote for Obama in ‘12.  He voted against Elena Kagan for solicitor general, but says he has ‘an open mind’ about her ascent to the Supreme Court…  He voted against Robert Bork for the high court, but famously defended Clarence Thomas and voted for John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr., although now, with respect to Roberts, he says that he made an error in judgment.”

Specter doesn’t just flip-flop—he does double lutzes and triple toe loops and tops it all off with a quadruple salchow, all before his supporters and opponents can catch their breath and figure out where he stands on an issue and whether his position has changed in the past five seconds.

FiveThirtyEight.com documents that Arlen Sepulcher voted 58% of the time with Democrats from January to March 2009, before Pat Toomey joined the Pennsylvania primary race.  After Toomey entered, but before Specter had switched parties, Specter voted 84% of the time with Republicans.  Then, during the period after Specter had switched parties but before liberal Joe Sestak had entered the race, he voted 69% of the time with Democrats again.  Finally, after Sestak emerged as his primary challenger, Specter tacked to the left and voted a whopping 97% of the time with Democrats.

The clincher that Specter is all about expediency, not principle, is that Obama’s grassroots group Organizing for America worked furiously to get Specter elected—even though there was a bona fide left-wing liberal, Joe Sestak, in the race—in exchange for Specter’s votes last year on the stimulus and health care bills.  With the cozy Obama-Specter alliance firmly in place, what does Obama need with a politician who might actually vote for his policies out of principle?

In a final ironic development capping Specter’s dishonorable career (proof of such: Time magazine named him one of the U.S.’s 10 best senators in 2006!), Specter discovered yesterday that his party switch was all for naught, and even harmful to his aspirations.  Specter recently admitted, before he was trounced in yesterday’s primary, “Well, I probably shouldn’t say this.  But I have thought from time to time that I might have helped the country more if I’d stayed a Republican.”

Democrats will no doubt claim that Sestak won the race because the country is clamoring for more socialism.  But really it’s because Americans loathe political opportunists like Specter.

 Print This Post

Related articles by Zemanta

• Specter loses Democratic Senate race in Pennsylvania (nationalpost.com)
• Joe Sestak Beats Arlen Specter For Democratic Senate Nod In Pennsylvania (alan.com)
• Sestak Won in PA, defeating Specter (americablog.com)
• Joe Sestak defeats Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary (trueslant.com)
• The worm has been turned out in Pennsylvania (powerlineblog.com)