Change!
Posted on 05/20/2010 5:40:23 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
Change is Barack Obama’s political calling card and the fuel that propelled his never-waste-a-crisis agenda — but change is boomeranging big time on the president in a turbulent and unpredictable 2010.
For the first time since he emerged as a national political figure six years ago, Obama finds himself on the wrong side of the change equation — the status quo side — with challengers in both parties running against him, his policies or his handpicked candidates.
Tea party conservative Rand Paul romped in the GOP Kentucky Senate primary by pledging to overturn virtually every major Obama initiative. And both Pennsylvania’s Joe Sestak, who knocked off a Democratic incumbent, and Bill Halter of Arkansas, who forced another one into a runoff, were spurned by Obama despite running on throw-the-bums-out platforms that could have been lifted from the president’s 2008 playbook.
“What I tell to the national Democrats is: ‘Bring it on, and please, please, please bring President Obama to Kentucky.’ We would want him to come and campaign for my opponent [Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway],” Paul told CNN on Wednesday, in a taunt reminiscent of statements by Democrats about President George W. Bush in 2006 and 2008. “In fact, we’ll pay for his plane ticket if President Obama will come to Kentucky.”
If the results of Tuesday’s night’s grab bag of Senate and House elections prove anything, it’s that Obama didn’t copyright the anti-Washington change message. At a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment, anxiety about the economy, two wars and fury about bailouts and Beltway pay to play, the message of change is bigger than any one cause, one party or even Obama himself.
“When I talk to people, I still don’t get the sense that they’re getting down on Obama too much yet ... but he is clearly behind the curve right now,” says Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, which endorsed Halter against Obama-backed Democratic incumbent Sen. Blanche Lincoln.
“The goodwill on this thing is pretty close to running out,” said Dean, brother of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. “This is really it right here, what happened Tuesday night is a catalyst for change. ... You can’t run things structurally like the old machine.”
Even the party’s big winner Tuesday — Mark Critz, who won Rep. John Murtha’s old seat in Pennsylvania — ran against Obama’s health care overhaul.
Obama has become so synonymous with the Washington establishment these days that a top Democratic consultant joked, “What the White House needs to do is endorse the candidate they don’t want to have win, then the candidate they want to win can run as anti-establishment.”
White House officials say they aren’t worried — Obama will regain his footing as the economy improves and heath care reforms take hold. No president, they say, could ever govern effectively while maintaining a pristine record as an outsider — and Obama’s outsize legislative goals have forced him to transact business with Congress, arguably the most unpopular institution in America.
“The farther we move away from health care, the better we do,” one adviser said.
Increasingly, Obama’s team envisions a supporting rather than a headlining role for the president in the midterms, offering his considerable fundraising apparatus to candidates, while continuing to hammer away at the administration’s commitment to job creation, using official events in states hardest hit by the financial crisis.
And they reject the idea that an explicitly anti-Obama message can work. “Let’s be careful about this — the one person who used the change argument against Barack Obama on Tuesday lost the election,” a senior White House official said, referring to Critz’s opponent, Republican Tim Burns. “He nationalized the election, made it expressly about Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and tried to position himself as an agent of change against both of them, and he got his head handed to him.”
Republicans have always rejected the notion that Obama was a true agent of change — they see him as a liberal reactionary who has revived Big Government Democratic policies of the past century.
But many of Obama’s progressive supporters are turned off by the ugly compromises he’s made on health reform, the stimulus, Guantanamo Bay and oil drilling.
The president — who has tried to position himself as an anti-Washington crusader in recent town halls throughout the country — has further alienated his party’s left wing by forging ungainly alliances with the likes of Sen. Arlen Specter, a moderate who switched parties to avoid a primary against Republican Pat Toomey.
“Obama’s brand is everything. If he loses the brand, he loses his power,” says Mark McKinnon, a political consultant who has advised Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), former President George W. Bush and Ann Richards, the late Democratic governor of Texas.
“He endorsed an establishment candidate and eroded his brand of change,” McKinnon said. “Instead of staying neutral or helping a younger populist Democrat campaigning on an Obama-like message of change, they bet on an 80-year-old former Republican because they thought he had a better shot to win in November. ... Obama is politically weakened because he sent the signal that his endorsement doesn’t mean that much.”
Obama, who needed Specter’s vote to pass the stimulus last year, distanced himself from the senator after Specter’s nightly polls showed him losing ground for two straight weeks. The White House was largely mute on Specter’s loss until Wednesday afternoon, when Vice President Joe Biden, who played a key role in getting Specter to switch parties, released a statement praising him for serving Pennsylvania “with determination, wisdom and skill for many years.”
Obama called Sestak to congratulate him hours after the primary was over -- and officials from the White House political office reached out to Sestak’s campaign to collaborate on fundraisers and, possibly, presidential visits, according to a person familiar with the situation.
And if Halter defeats Lincoln in the runoff — and most Democratic operatives think he will — the White House will embrace the Arkansas lieutenant governor as enthusiastically as the more conservative Lincoln.
Arkansas Democrats say Halter will gladly accept Obama’s support — even though he would be reluctant to have the president campaign personally in a border state that went for McCain in 2008.
Tea party conservative Rand Paul romped in the GOP Kentucky Senate primary by pledging to overturn virtually every major Obama initiative.
Do you hear that Repubbies?
Richar Burr: You reading this????
Its your playbook!
Boomeranging any bets that CNN will call that racist?.
Change!
WTF? It hasn't been a border state for centuries.
Obama has become so synonymous with the Washington establishment these days that a top Democratic consultant joked, “What the White House needs to do is endorse the candidate they don’t want to have win, then the candidate they want to win can run as anti-establishment.”
I sure hope that the WH never sees the above quote and then endorses the non-RAT. That would be an incredible move on their part.
“Instead of staying neutral or helping a younger populist Democrat campaigning on an Obama-like message of change”
Translation: Supporting the Commie candidate...
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