There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, but there is one in ‘selfish.’
As the November election draws near, it’s clear the only person President Barack Obama is concerned with helping is himself.
Obama’s refusal to confront the serious issues facing Americans, including the national debt, entitlement reform and the economic recession, have had Republicans up in arms since Obama’s first days in office.
However, members of Obama’s party should begin taking notice of his empty promises as their own contentious re-election bids heat up and they become carnage along Obama’s sustained path to power.
As the Washington Examiner’s Haley Peterson notes, “With Obama’s own re-election race against Republican Mitt Romney already tightening, some analysts wonder whether the president will even have time to worry about other Democrats.”
Indeed, Obama’s focus on his own race thus far has been so great that the President hasn’t found time to campaign for his own party’s candidates in high-stakes special elections this month, let alone candidates with elections five months from now.
Not once did Obama travel to Wisconsin to stump for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who lost Tuesday’s recall election against GOP Governor Scott Walker.
Nor has the President campaigned for Ron Barber (D-Ariz), who is running in the special Congressional election to replace former Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords (AZ-07). Barber faces GOP candidate Jesse Kelly on June 12.
Political pundits and Republicans speculate that Obama disassociated himself from Wisconsin because it was obvious Walker would win the recall. That’s a possible explanation, but the Wisconsin recall wasn’t exactly a shoe-in for Republicans.
In Arizona, Barber, a former Giffords aide, is the favorite to win in the Democratic district. Giffords herself is scheduled to make one of her first public appearances since the tragic shooting that almost took her life this Saturday at a campaign rally for Barber. Though the district itself is heavily Democratic, the state boasts an ultra conservative Governor (Jan Brewer) and two GOP Senators. It also went for GOP nominee John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008 and is expected to go red again, with Romney increasing his lead to 50 percent of the vote compared to Obama’s 43 percent in the most recent poll.
Furthermore, Obama handily won Wisconsin in 2008 with 56 percent of the vote to McCain’s 42 percent.
What are the two common denominators between Wisconsin and Arizona? The Obama campaign already knows where it stands in both states. Forget the needs of the Democratic Party as a whole. Campaign appearances there at this juncture are a waste of their prize cow’s time.
“In this particular year the President is campaigning for re-election. That’s his total preoccupation,” said Senator Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) on CNN’s State of the Union last Sunday.
Lugar’s analysis perfectly sums up why neither the American people nor Democrats running for federal office should count on Obama making their needs a priority before the November presidential election. ‘Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer,’ goes the motto. But it’s apparent that the Obama 2012 campaign have ‘evolved’ the motto to ‘Keep your friends close, keep your campaign closer.”
