Obama is now radioactive. - Democratic Underground

Nuclear Unicorn

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Wed Sep-14-11 03:37 PM
Original message

Obama is now radioactive.

He will drag down the rest of the ticket in 2012. With a new candidate we can staunch the bleeding. Even with nothing more than a vigorous primary we can at least salvage our credibility for 2014 and beyond.

But if we rally behind Obama just because he's "my , right or wrong," he will poison the senate races and secure GOP margins in the house.

The fact is, a conservative Catholic republican won a significant portion of the vote from a group that generally doesn't hold many fond memories of Catholics.

It wasn't a punitive vote against Weiner.

It wasn't big corporate money because the DCCC dumps a ton of money into this including a big, last minute push.

I haven't seen historical off-year election voter turnout comparisons but I'll hazard a guess even that poultice will fail to relieve the sting. Some people vote with their ballots, dollars, their feet or even their butts. A vote is still a vote.

This was a vote on Obama in a D+5 district that hasn't gone GOP in 90 years. Gore won 67%

“They can spin all they want,” said the Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf yesterday. “This is about the fact that a good portion of the district doesn't trust president on the economy, doesn’t trust him on the state of Israel. You put it together you have a toxic cocktail. Now, you tell me: If you can’t win Jewish voters here, you can’t win ethnic Catholic voters here, how do you win them in Missouri? How do you win them in Florida?”

Here's the part that should terrify us --

Actually, this disastrous election gave the Democrats a few hints. The party tried, and failed, to wound Turner by telling voters he’d provide one more Republican vote to weaken entitlements. That worked in New York’s 26th district, where Democrat Kathy Hochul tore pages out of the Ryan plan and made her Republican opponent eat them. In the 9th, Turner and his surrogates tried to neutralize the entitlement issue by promising not to cut entitlements. In two robocalls, Koch promised voters that Turner wouldn’t cut Medicare or Social Security. The weekend before the election, Hikind said the same thing, and bolstered his case by saying Democrats were risking the programs.

Link -- http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2011/09/14/chosen_people_and_human_sacrifices.html

People no longer fear threats to SS and Medicare because Obama himself has decided to tap-dance on the 3rd rail of politics.

Add to that discontent, right or wrong, over foreign policy and his seeming impotence to undue the harm of the Bush economic policies and we will see the Perfect Electoral Storm next year.

We can complain, truthfully, that he was dealt a bad hand but presidents aren't elected to fold or bluff, they're elected to win. The question before the 2012 electorate isn't "Is Obama to blame?" It's "Can he fix it?" or "Is he making it worse?" He called a joint session of congress to fix the economy and the only thing it fixed was insomnia. Who cares what the GOP thinks, the evidence is the party is filled with doubts and if they have doubts you better believe the independents long ago turned away.

Link -- http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=DEF91CE7-00CC-4D50-8666-DA41AEF46CB6

Please don't tell me how much we need to keep the Perromneylin beast out of the White House; that horse is out of the barn and sitting in the Oval Office. The only thing left is measuring the drapes. We need to realize we might lose the senate and the GOP will become entrenched in the House for the foreseeable future. This is no longer about winning this is about stopping the losses. We need enough dems left over to block the bills and judicial nominations we know are coming.

Save the senate while there is still time.