Vulnerable Democratic candidates have struggled in this midterm election cycle to separate themselves from the policies of an unpopular president — and that was before President Obama started talking.
In a string of recent remarks, Obama has explicitly linked Democrats to his policies, throwing a wrench in their efforts to prove their independence to voters.
“Here’s the bottom line,” Obama said on MSNBC recently. “We’ve got a tough map. A lot of the states that are contested this time are states that I didn’t win. And so some of the candidates there, you know, it is difficult for them to have me in the state because the Republicans will use that to try to fan Republican turnout.”
“The bottom line is, though, these are all folks who vote with me,” Obama added. “They have supported my agenda in Congress.”
Republican challengers have hounded Democratic incumbents in states from North Carolina to Arkansas to New Hampshire for voting in support of the president’s policies most of the time. That, some Democrats argue, is to be expected.
“In the end each and every one of these guys are going to have to do what they think best to win their race, but the president has a point,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist. “In this day and age, with all of the clever editing you can do with advertising and all of the different ways you can slice and dice data to make whatever point you want, it’s almost impossible to run away from a president. And you are fooling yourself if you think otherwise.”
But, with the president’s remarks, there has been no slicing or dicing necessary. Earlier this month, Obama made a similar remark, which has already been parlayed into attack ads against Democratic candidates across multiple states.
“I’m not on the ballot this fall. But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot,” Obama said during a speech at Northwestern University. “Every single one of them.”
In Alaska, for example, a radio ad currently on the air uses those remarks to attack Sen. Mark Begich, one of the most vulnerable incumbents in this election cycle, who has struggled to separate himself from the president’s policies in a state where the vast majority of voters now disapprove of Obama.
Appearing on “Meet The Press” earlier this month, former Obama adviser David Axelrod conceded that the president’s word choice was, politically, not ideal. “It was a mistake,” Axelrod said.
