President Obama is not backing away from his full-throated endorsement of Hillary Clinton in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s decision to review additional emails connected to the probe of her use of a private email address and server when she was secretary of state.
“There is only one candidate who can continue that progress,” Obama told supporters about his accomplishments during a Clinton campaign rally in Orlando, Fla., Friday. “So I am going to work my heart out.”
Obama assured the crowd he is energized for Clinton.
“I got one campaign left in me,” he opened. “I’m here to make sure Hillary Clinton is the next president.”
Obama said he couldn’t do everything Americans wanted him to do “in one presidency” and that’s why they must vote for Clinton, otherwise, “all that progress goes out the window if we don’t win this election.”
Obama has no choice but to soldier through, said one Democratic campaign strategist who requested anonymity.
“From the moment he embraced her candidacy, there was no going back,” the strategist said. “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”
Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and all top Democrats knew they were rolling the dice backing Clinton and that they could end up facing this “nightmare scenario,” as knowledgeable Democrats privately call it, where she is still under the FBI microscope or worse come Election Day.
“Nothing they know now they didn’t know when this all started,” the strategist said.
That scenario was at the heart of last summer’s “draft Biden” movement.
“They want to be ready in case something happens that would create an opening for him to run,” a knowledgeable Democratic operative told the Washington Examiner last year. “They want to be prepared,” in case the email controversy mortally wounded her.
Biden passed on a third run at the White House to focus on advancing cancer research.
The Democratic strategist who spoke to the Examiner Friday said Biden spared putting Obama in an awkward position by doing so.
”That was never gong to happen,” the strategist said about a Biden candidacy. “She was always his first choice.”
Even before doubling down on Clinton Friday, Obama hitched his legacy to her campaign.
“But all that progress is at stake if we don’t do the right thing these next 19 days,” Obama told voters in Miami Oct. 20 about why they must back Clinton after rattling off his achievements in office.
Obama has said before that he sees Clinton’s election as part of his legacy. “I will consider it a personal insult, an insult to my legacy, if this community lets down its guard and fails to activate itself in this election,” Obama told black leaders gathered at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual gala in Washington Sept. 17.
When it comes to questions about Clinton’s emails, the Clinton Foundation or the leaked, hacked emails of party officials, Obama and White House spokesmen are careful to distance the president from Clinton’s alleged misdeeds and then pivot to why Obama is supporting Clinton.
“If you have questions about the scope or nature of the FBI’s work, you should check in with the FBI,” deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told reporters traveling with Obama to Orlando Friday. “If you have questions about the president’s views of Secretary Clinton, you should” listen to the “enthusiastic, forceful case for why she should succeed him in the Oval Office” Obama was about to make.
Press secretary Josh Earnest used the same tactic Thursday when asked about the Clinton family’s charity, telling reporters to direct their questions to her campaign.
Obama and his aides tout Clinton’s credentials to succeed him but distance him from her missteps.
“Of course the president had possession of Secretary Clinton’s email address, but he did not have any knowledge or where her server was located or what sort of arrangements had been made to store her email,” Earnest deflected on Tuesday.
Some observed have expressed shock they can get away with it.
“I’m amazed that President Obama’s stewardship has not been an issue” in this campaign, said Richard Benedetto, a journalism professor at American University and former longtime White House correspondent for USA Today.
After all, Clinton’s latest controversies are all attached to her official actions while serving in Obama’s Cabinet, he said.
“No one in the press… holds his feet to the fire,” Benedetto said. “Whenever something happens, it’s not Obama’s problem. Anything that ever goes wrong in the administration… it’s always Lorretta Lynch’s problem or James Comey’s problem.”
Susan Crabtree contributed to this report.
