Obama couldn't buy a win
DNN Staff-EXCLUSIVE!
Monday, May 24, 2010
If you think the Red Sox are struggling for a win, consider poor President Obama.
Tuesday, in his own party’s primary, in a state he carried 55-45 percent, Barack Obama’s personally-endorsed candidate, longtime incumbent Arlen Specter got walloped in Pennsylvania. Not only is Obama unable to deliver for his endorsed candidates, he can’t deliver among Democrats.
Add that loss to the president’s performances in Virginia, New Jersey - not to mention Martha Coakley in super-blue Massachusetts - and the amazing, leg-tingling, hope-and-change president has a worse win-loss record than Dice-K.
Now, all politics is local, and a president’s impact on any race is limited - but still. The “Southside Kid” doesn’t have a single campaign victory since taking office? Nobody expected that. Certainly not Obama’s good friend and political doppelganger, Deval Patrick.
Gov. Patrick’s supporters say he’s on a roll, that his re-election prospects have never been better. That’s an odd way to describe an incumbent whose best re-elect number in a year was 45 percent, but given how bleak things were six months ago, he’ll take it. And the assumption has always been that, come the fall, Obama would barnstorm into Massachusetts and put it away for Patrick.
Not anymore. The latest rumor is that Obama has a secret plan to help Patrick win in November. He’s going to spend October campaigning for Charlie Baker.
With the defeat of Specter, Tuesday’s primaries made a lot of headlines. But they were just another series in this political season, showing the same trends: It’s a bad year for incumbents, a good year for challengers, and a terrible year to have anything to do with Obama.
Which means it’s likely to be a bad year for Patrick.
The governor is a nice guy, but even his most ardent supporters admit he’s got a record that’s tough to defend: Tax hikes, toll hikes, business costs up, employment down, health care costs exploding and Beacon Hill is more of a rudderless mess than when he took office.
His winning strategy for months has been the double-play: Keep the 60 percent anti-Deval vote divided among two candidates. If Tim Cahill keeps fading, that game plan goes out the window. What Patrick needs is magic.
Two storylines of 2010 continued through Tuesday. One is the unpopularity of incumbents. The other, the unpopularity of Obama’s policies. That’s two strikes against Patrick.
For example, the Democrat who held on to Rep. John Murtha’s seat in Pennsylvania, Mark Critz, actually ran against Obama. In Arkansas, Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s votes for the stimulus and Obamacare forced her into a runoff in the Democratic primary, and make her a Dead Dem Walking if she survives until November.
The Tea Party trend that helped Scott Brown here helped give Rand Paul the GOP nomination in Kentucky. The Tea Party will certainly last until November.
So come Election Day Patrick will take the field with the same troubled line up - the same president, the same unpopular policies on health care and immigration and the same anti-incumbent mood.
Will Patrick win? Maybe if he can convince his pal Obama to spend campaign season hanging out with his closest friends - in Hawaii.
Another one bites the dust:
Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., and his wife Joan Specter,
right, leave the election party after Specter gave his
concession speech to supporters last week
in Philadelphia. (DNN Staff photo)
Boston O'Reilly, Graham Carr Siciliano Unlike the others, we tell you what's really happening.
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