Posted on 08/08/2014 4:59:04 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Getting the president’s backing isn’t what it used to be—he looks set to go 0-2 on Saturday, with the two candidates he endorsed in his home state apparently headed for defeat.
When Barack Obama vaulted onto the national stage a decade ago, part of his appeal was that he seemed to be from so many places at once. All corners of the country could lay claim to him: He was Hawaiian by birth, Illinoisan by choice, and Kansan by heritage, and he spent his formative years in New York City. He marched through the 2008 primaries by winning in both the deep red states that Democrats typically eschewed and urban centers populated by low-income voters and young progressives.
Now, six years into his presidency and with his popularity fading, it seems Obama is having trouble finding a place to call home. In state after state that once called the president its favorite son, he is finding that his political advocacy is unwelcome.
Consider Hawaii, where Obama was born, lived until he was 6, and returned to finish grade school and high school, and where he still vacations with his family every holiday season. In the Aloha State, Obama has endorsed and cut a radio ad for Neil Abercrombie, the incumbent governor.
“He knew my parents before I was a twinkle in their eye, and he was one of the first people anywhere to step up and support me for president. So you could say that Gov. Abercrombie has had my back since before I was born,” Obama says in the unusually personal radio spot. “His commitment to Hawaii runs deep, just like mine. I value him as a partner, and because of Neil’s work, Hawaii’s best days are ahead.”
But despite Obama’s testimonial, Hawaiians seem set to turn their backs on Abercrombie; he trailed his previously little-known opponent, state Sen. David Ige, by nearly 20 points ahead of Saturday’s Democratic primary. That same day, Brian Schatz, whom Abercrombie appointed to the Senate in 2012 to replace the legendary Daniel Inouye, will face challenger Colleen Hanabusa, a congresswoman long groomed to be Inouye’s successor. Obama voiced his support for Schatz all the way back in March, calling him “The right choice to continue delivering for Hawaii,” and at the time The Washington Post called the endorsement one of the few big enough to move the needle in a competitive election.
But a poll released Monday gave Hanabusa a 3-point lead, after she had trailed for much of the campaign.
Political analysts say Saturday’s election could end in a result rarely seen in American politics: an incumbent president making not one but two endorsements in a primary in his home state (or one of them, at least) and losing both.
“This is certainly a place where his endorsement remains welcome,” said Neil Milner, a Hawaii-based political consultant. “No one here hides from the fact that they know Obama. But [his endorsements] have certainly not moved the needle in any real way.”
To be sure, Obama has not spent much political capital or much time out on the trail for Abercrombie or Schatz. And Hawaii politics has a tendency to mostly ignore mainland trends and issues.
But it’s not just Hawaii where the Obama touch isn’t turning candidacies into winners. In Illinois in 2010, Mark Kirk became only the second Republican in the state since the 1980s to win a U.S. Senate seat, taking Obama’s old seat. The president campaigned and fundraised for Kirk’s opponent, state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, but it was not enough to overcome a Tea Party wave and the stench of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich auctioning off the seat to the highest bidder.
But now Obama’s old stomping grounds, a state where Democrats enjoy a 15-point registration advantage, is in danger of becoming decidedly purple. The incumbent governor, Pat Quinn, whom Obama backed in 2010, is trailing his Republican opponent by double digits.
According to Paul Green, the director of the Institute for Politics at Roosevelt University and a political analyst for WGN Radio, Obama was never one to wave the pompoms for his fellow Illinois Democrats, and that hands-off approach means that he does not have much sway when election time comes.
“He has never been a party guy. He’s not a rebel, but it is just like it is down in Washington. He is a University of Chicago guy. He’s aloof,” Green said. “He is not a schmoozer. He is good at it, but he doesn’t like it.”
This notion of Obama the outsider is what carried him to the White House, but it also helps explain why he struggles to give much boost to his chosen candidates. That holds true for Hawaii, where, according to Colin Moore, political science professor at the University of Hawaii, what is noticeable to local politicos is not that Obama made two primary endorsements but that he made two primary endorsements that go against the Japanese-American political machine that dominates the islands’ politics.
“The most interesting story here is that Obama is going against the old Inouye machine,” Moore said. “He is backing outsiders, and that is extraordinary, even though he is the president.”
The same dynamic, in a more limited way, is playing out in New York City, which has a smaller claim to the president—he spent his last two years of college there and lived in Harlem briefly after school before decamping to Chicago—but which has made a bid on hosting Obama’s presidential library and is a city where Obama has mused aloud about moving to after his time at the White House is up.
In 2010, Obama suggested that Rep. Charlie Rangel, whose tenure stretches back so far that Obama likely voted for him when he lived uptown, step down rather than face a series of ethics investigations. The suggestion became a talking point for Rangel’s re-election bid in 2010, then again in 2012, and then a third time in 2014. He won all three elections, in spite of the president’s apparent disapproval.
It would be miraculous indeed if a Republican won the Senate seat in Hawaii.
Of course, it also might be a moot point...I would assume the Republicans there are as liberal as Connecticut “Republicans”.
He’s got the magic touch, reverseably speaking.
So Obama smells like sh*t, politically speaking.
**He was Hawaiian by birth,***
And yet, reviews of the books He “wrote” say he was born in Kenya, and when he ran for the Senate from Illinois I remember hearing on news that he was born in Kenya.
Now suddenly he is born in Hawaii.
I thought it was Indonesia????
No. Obama is Kenyan by birth, Indonesian by citizenship, still an illegal alien, and a Muslim supremacist by choice doing all he can to destroy the country.
Hawaii is one of the most democrat of states but those folks absolutely HATED homosexual marriage being forced on them in 2013 after they had voted two to one against it a few years before. Neil Abercrombie was one of its backers so I’m wondering how much that has to do with this evil troll’s political downfall.
The GOP will win the HI Governorship, but the Senate seat is unlikely.
REALLY? Abercrombie was chums with Mrs. Soetero Obama Dunham? Abercrombie was chums with Mr. Obama.
I guess that must be a fact since two liberal radicals said so.
In his own words
Abercrombie’s rigging of homosexual “marriage” through the legislature in a special session is having its repercussions. Abercrombie and his cabal are generally financially supported by far left Democrats on the Mainland, not local people. (Abercrombie is one of the original Democrat Socialists of America that have now largely gone underground, at least in terms of fessing up to who they are.) Approximately 2/3 of the Hawaii Democrat Party money now comes from out-of-state homosexual advocacy groups who were pushing for same-sex “marriage” and forced the Democrats in the legislature to vote for it, although there was heavy, heavy opposition in the public.
Now, in the primary, Abercrombie is trailing 10-15% behind another virtually unknown Democrat. Both living prior Democrat Governors, Ariyoshi and Cayetano, have come out publicly against him for being beholden to special interests and being controlled by donors outside of Hawaii and have made video interviews dissing Abercromie and endorsing his Democrat challenger.
And, the likely Republican challengers for Gov./Lt.Gov in polls are shown having a substantial lead against against anyone the Democrats can put up. This includes a likely Lt. Gov. candidate who is a well-known local pastor and got so angry about what happened in the special session he came out to run for office. He is heavily supported by Christians in Hawaii, who can be a potent force and finally have said they have had enough. The Democrats have awoken a sleeping giant, and they are really running scared, you can feel it.
Is this good? Abercrombie’s opponent is endorsed by the teachers’ union.
We’ve worked hard to organize all church congregations to vote in this election, and the impetus for this organization was same sex marriage. Additionally, Abercrombie angered some key voting blocks in the Dem Party early on, and it does appear this will cost him the primary. So Ige the Dem will be up against Aiona the Repub, and in the general election we will see if the Christian vote will carry the day, in which case it will also bring in Djou to DC in the House.
Most likely that 0bama doesn’t vacation in HI.
I sense the momentum is growing. What scares the Democrats is before they always could paint the Republican opposition as being over-privileged haoles (which to a large extent was true). But the new Republican support is coming from churches comprised heavily of “locals.” So especially if Abercrombie wins, it’s going to look like out-of-state haole lefty liberals like Abercrombie and Schatz versus locals (Aiona and Ahu and their supporters).
Abercrappie is a smelly old socialist that should have been shut out of USA polotics decades ago for his blatant antii American activities. But then, that did not stop John F'n Kerry, did it?
Hawai’i is starting to make a shift away from Democrat control? ‘Twould be a miracle.
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