THE DAILY BLADE: Is Deeds A Dead Man Walking?
Several Obama administration ghouls are putting a stake in the heart of the gubernatorial campaign of R. Creigh Deeds (D), lest his loss in VA on November 3rd be interpreted as a referendum on President Barack Hussein Obama’s popularity. The White House spin is that Deeds is a dud, reports The Washington Post:
Sensing that victory in the race for Virginia governor is slipping away, Democrats at the national level are laying the groundwork to blame a loss in a key swing state on a weak candidate who ran a poor campaign that failed to fully embrace President Obama until days before the election.
Senior administration officials have expressed frustration with how Democrat R. Creigh Deeds has handled his campaign for governor, refusing early offers of strategic advice and failing to reach out to several key constituencies that helped Obama win Virginia in 2008, they say. …
A loss for Deeds in Virginia - which for the first time in decades supported the Democratic presidential candidate in last year's race - would likely be seen as a sign that Obama's popularity is weakening in critical areas of the country. But the unusual preelection criticism could be an attempt to shield Obama from that narrative by ensuring that Deeds is blamed personally for the loss, particularly given the state's three-decade pattern of backing candidates from the party out of power in the White House.
A senior Deeds adviser declined to "[do] a postmortem on a race that we're working hard to win and that we think is still winnable."
Obama’s swooning poll numbers - 53 percent in 3Q 2009 vs. 62 percent in 2Q 2009, the largest drop ever measured during this timeframe in Gallup’s daily tracking poll for elected presidents going back as far as Eisenhower – “hover just above the level that would make [his own] re-election an uphill struggle,” reports The Telegraph of London.
In the short term, this means Obama doesn’t have the juice to propel Deeds to victory or Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) to re-election in two states that he won in the 2008 election. In fact, a recent Rasmussen poll found that if Obama campaigns for Deeds, just 23 percent of VA voters would be more likely to vote for the Democrat, while nearly double that number (43 percent) would be less likely to vote for him.
In the long term, it remains to be seen whether Obama has coattails – that is, whether the immense goodwill and popularity he enjoyed when he took office will rub off onto other Democrats during the midterm elections. There are signs that he has lost his charm amongst independent voters but more worrisome for the party’s long-term prospects is that black voters, who came out in droves to vote for Obama, are settling back into their traditional voting patterns, reports The Washington Times:
Pollsters and election analysts expect a steep drop-off of black voters - who historically back Democrats - in the nation's two gubernatorial contests and in congressional races Nov. 3, and they predict it is likely to cast a shadow in 2010 over at least 10 House Democrats with large black constituencies. …
University of Wisconsin political science professor Barry Burden said the upcoming elections will test the staying power of 2008's "Obama effect," the first election in which blacks voted in similar proportions as whites. …
“For the moment, [Democrats] need African-Americans to win office, particularly in places like Virginia that have trended more red [Republican] than blue," Mr. Burden said. …
Black voters cast 20 percent of Virginia's ballots in the presidential election. Pollsters say that number will drop to about 16 percent Nov. 3.
"It is going to show there is a limit to how transferable the excitement Barack Obama generated with black voters is to other candidates," said [Tom Jensen, spokesman for the Democrat-leaning Public Policy Polling].
But is the reverse also true? Is there a limit to how transferable the antipathy Obama has generated with conservative and independent voters is to Repub candidates?
As of now, The Washington Post’s Dan Balz sees the political landscape looking “decidedly more favorable for Republicans than in either of the past two elections” but he warns that “the confluence of the political forces that have been building” since Obama took office cuts both ways:
Three forces threaten Democrats in the 2010 elections: populist anger on the right, disaffection in the middle and potential disillusionment on the left. …
Whatever problems Obama and the Democrats are having, Republicans aren't wildly popular, either. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who helped engineer the 1994 GOP victory, offered an astute analysis when asked to compare the climate today with conditions heading into 1994.
"People are more frightened than they were in '93 and '94 - both by the radicalism of the administration and by the economy," Gingrich said. But he added: "They're more skeptical of Republicans than they were in '93 and '94. The aftereffect of '06 and '08 is there's not a rush to Republicans."
If Repubs can’t automatically count on disaffected conservatives and populists to come out for them on election day, then neither can Dems count on independents – who went for the party in a big way in 2006 and 2008, but are now pulling away from Obama - or liberals and young voters. These two core Obama constituencies are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the president’s reneging on several key campaign promises, including pulling troops out of Iraq, closing Gitmo and failing to pass climate change legislation – and their lack of enthusiasm will not be offset by another historic black turnout.
All of which begs the question: What if they held an election and nobody showed up?
In Memoriam
Soupy Sales, January 28, 1926 - October 22, 2009
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