'These are are all folks who vote with me,' President Says of Dems Trying to Escape His Lethal Clutch

White House

Democratic candidates may run, but they can't hide—not from a president determined to tie them all to the mast of his sinking ship and take them down with him. After acknowledging to Al Sharpton in an MSNBC interview that many members of his party are disassociating themselves from him in an effort to gain traction with voters unimpressed by his agenda, President Obama noted, "the bottom line is, though, these are are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress."

Those racing from Obama's embrace and desperately trying to convince all and sundry that they supported nothing of the sort include Alison Lundergan Grimes. The Kentucky senatorial candidate made national headlines by refusing to say whether she voted for her party's own presidential candidate.

President Obama's massively complex and endlessly tweaked healthcare monstrosity is just one albatross around Democrats' necks. Nobody is thrilled with the economy in the middle of his second term. His foreign policy is no winner. Two-thirds of Americans say the country is on the wrong track. Dissatisfaction with the president's handling of Ebola has proven…infectious.

In an article noting the legions of Democrats around the country treating the incumbent president as kryptonite, Time noted, "Democrats are hoping this election won't be a referendum on the president, as midterm elections so often are."

But President Obama is having none of that. "Now, I am not on the ballot this fall," he commented earlier this month at Northwestern University. "But make no mistake:  These policies are on the ballot—every single one of them."

"It was a mistake," former White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod said of that particular blown kiss of death to the disloyal minions. The latest comment, too, he'd probably say, was a boo-boo.

But maybe it wasn't. Maybe the president took a look at his plunging approval numbers and decided he wants some company on the way down.

Comments

[Suthenboy]

Well, what do you know...he finally did something I approve of. I wish he would double down on it, go to every hotly contested state and say over and over again....this Dem candidate voted with me and will continue to do so.

[Swiss Servator, spare a franc?]

Dissatisfaction with the president's handling of Ebola has proven...infectious.

You have been saving that one up for just the right moment, haven't you, J.D.?

[Poppa Kilo]

Glad you caught that...

[SugarFree]

McConnell has switched to running ads about Grimes refusing to answer if she voted for Obama or not. I haven't seen an ads with her trying to fight back on the point. Obama is toxic.

[Ken Shultz]

"The bottom line is, though, these are are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress."

Obama doesn't give a shit about the Democrats.

LOL

[VG Zaytsev]

Did anyone ever think that he did?

This is the guy that watched his mentor in Chicago go to federal prison.

[Ahem']

Ode to the big O

My way down
Ain't gonna be nice
Long road down
All covered with ice
My way down......

Our self absorbed megalomaniac president doesn't give a shit about anything but himself.

[Palin's Buttplug]

Partisan wrangling. Let me know when the economy is in full collapse and US soldiers are coming home by the thousands in bodybags - all pissed away in a useless $2 trillion war. Things could be that bad - they were.

[Paul.]

So, "vote Democrat, it could be worse!"

That's dedication!

[Andrew S.]

That's what it all comes down to in politics, isn't it?

By the way, whoever programs PB, you really need to take the program down for a while and do some work on it. It used to be so good I thought it could pass the Turing Test, but now it's just incomprehensible.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever since Obama acquired the White House, hasn't that been the battle cry of TEAM Blue?

"Sure we fucked it up, but TEAM Red would be worse!"

Way to aim high, fellas.

[radar]

Bodybags?

US casualties in Afghanistan 2009-present: 1677

[nuffcedmcgreevey]

Those body bags stopped mattering when Team Blue took control. Only Republican body bags count.

[VG Zaytsev]

Let me know when the economy is in full collapse and US soldiers are coming home by the thousands in bodybags - all pissed away in a useless $2 trillion war.

IOW Bammy's agenda hasn't quite reached fruition yet.

[RockLibertyWarrior]

Your butt buddy has started proxy wars, killed Americans without warrant via drones, kept us in the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq, added trillions in debt etc. Need I go on? Not to mention the economy. "Things could be that bad-they were." Your delusional, their worse your head is far up your left wing partisan ass your licking the back of your throat with a shit covered tongue. Do us a favor and leave the discussion to grown ups, imaginary land is for babies.

[Paul.]

not from a president determined to tie them all to the mast of his sinking ship and take them down with him.

Hyperbole much?

He's not exactly "going down". He's a two-term president and I'd suspect that if he were up to a third he'd probably sail to victory-- not by the margins in 2012 or anything, but he'd sail. He'd still have a lock on the millennial vote because, when it comes down to it, his base will never turn on him, the black vote would never go for Hillary, let alone a Republican.

Yes, he's having tough times as many second term presidents do due to a kind of fatigue with the voters.

[John]

not by the margins in 2012 or anything,

Those margins were not very large. And something like 55% of the country now says Mitt Romney was the better choice.

Moreover, while the black community still supports him, they have little enthusiasm for him. I think he would have about as much chance of winning a third term as George Bush would have.

In fact, he would have a hard time getting the nomination. The hard left is already rewriting history and deciding he wasn't really a Prog after all and that is why he has failed so badly.

[Hillary's Clitdong]

It's not shocking that a President's poll numbers would be dropping like a stone in the middle of his second term. What is funny is that Obama is too thin-skinned to tolerate members of his party trying to publicly distance themselves from him.

[SugarFree]

I think Obama might be fine with losing the Senate. He's rolling the dice that the Stupid Party will be such spectacular fuck-ups that Hillary will be elected.

When you consider the obsessions that a GOP House and Senate will indulge in, Obama might well be right.

[Andrew S.]

Oh, I'm pretty sure he's right. Just like there's no peak derp when it comes to the media (or internet commenters), there's no peak stupid when it comes to Team Red. They're going to find a way to fuck things up spectacularly between now and November 2016.

[John]

The cult of the Presidency makes it hard for a party that controls Congress but not the White House to fuck up too badly. The public blames the President and his party for the state of the country. That is not always fair since the Congress has or should have all of the power. But thanks to the cult of the Presidency, that is how it works.

Name me the last time the Congress of either party got blamed for anything?

[Idle Hands]

Umm the shutdown?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or as those of us without our hands in the public trough called it, "an uneventful week."

[John]

I really wish they had left it shut down for months. The longer it went on the more it hurt the Democrats and the less the country would have cared about it. It would have within in a month or two just become the normal state of affairs and the public would have moved on to caring about something else.

[John]

That is one example. It didn't seem to hurt them much though. More importantly, even though the Republicans got "blamed" (somehow Republicans always are no matter if they are the President or the Congress), it didn't get Obama and the Democrats off the hook for the general state of the country. The shut down may have hurt the standing of Republicans. It did not however improve the standing of the Democrats.

[Zeb]

There was a shutdown?

Oh, right. That week where the government wasted money trying to annoy people as much as possible.

[Ahem']

"That is not always fair since the Congress has or should have all of the power."

He has a pen and he's not afraid to use it, apparently he doesn't need those folks in congress.

[John]

I don't think so. First, I really don't think Obama gives a shit what happens after he leaves. Its all about him. Second, even if he does, I don't think he wants Hillary elected. The Obama and Clinton machines are like the Botzini and Corleone families in the Godfather.

I think he desperately wants to keep the Senate. If the Democrats lose the Senate, it might force them to really start distancing themselves from Obama going into 2016. If the Democrats keep the Senate, he can tell them to keep covering up for him since the election shows doing so wont' hurt them and the truth about him ever coming out certainly will. If the Democrats lose the Senate, a few Democrats up for re-election in 2016, might conclude that their only hope is to go after him to try and make sure voters don't associate them with Obama. If that happens, the whole thing collapses. Criticism of Obama and interest in the various scandals would become bipartisan and the media would no longer be able to ignore all of it as just another Republican witch hunt.

The only way a sitting President suffers is if his own party goes after him on an issue. If the Democrats conclude that covering for Obama makes them into losers, they will go after him and the gig will be up.

[SugarFree]

Yes, this could just be an ego move on his part.

Of course the easiest way to preserve your legacy is to not be a shitty president in the first place. But that ship sailed--and then sank--a long time ago.

[John]

It is really terrifying to think that Obama might be so out of touch with reality he still thinks he is popular. Even Nixon understood that the country didn't like him.

I think he might actually believe that he is still popular and is trying to help. If he is that out of touch about his own popularity, how many other things is he delusional about? That is not a comforting thought.

[Mainer2]

He seems to have been exempt from the feedback loop that trains most of us how to deal with the world. He's been insulated but doesn't know it. Look at how he assumed that some arch words would cow a truly tough motherfucker like Putin. My theory is it started with his "interceptions"...the stories how he grabbed the joint out of turn for extra tokes. In my crowd, first you'd get called an asshole, then get the shit knocked out of you if you kept it up. So our President is delusional because he never learned from as ass kicking in high school.....just a theory.

[John]

I always found that story to be much more revealing than the media realized. My experience regarding such behavior is exactly the same as yours. I don't think it would have gotten you beat up in the circles I ran in. But it definitely would have ensured you didn't get invited back.

That Obama could have been such a dedicated pot smoker and in the culture of it so long and never learned or cared that doing that was a major party foul, shows that at least in his youth he really thought the rules just didn't apply to him. I am not seeing any other experiences in his later life that would have taught him otherwise.

[Idle Hands]

If he is that out of touch about his own popularity, how many other things is he delusional about? That is not a comforting thought.

I literally can't count the number of times that him or a member of his administration have had meetings with people(foreign diplomats, leaders, members of congress and others) and talked about things discussed or the postions of their allies in that meeting to the media afterwords. Only to have the members of said meeting come out and say they were mischaracterized in some way.

[Idle Hands]

it's mind-boggling that this isn't talked about more.

[John]

If it wasn't so serious and didn't have so much effect on the real world, it would be comical. They wake up every day absolutely certain they are brilliant and nuanced in their thinking. In reality they are blinded by politics to such a degree they understand virtually nothing what is happening in the real world.

They misunderstand what is happening in those meetings because they refuse to believe that anything contrary to their politics and world view could ever occur. So when people act contrary to that, and they always do, the Obama people just pretend to have seen something else. They have no idea that their politics might be wrong or that people might act for their own motives.

[Zeb]

I am so far from even being able to imagine what motivates someone like Obama that I won't even guess at what he really thinks about anything. All I can do is just assume that pretty much all politicians are amoral sociopaths.

[mr lizard]

"There's always vanity!"

[John]

Bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. Obama is just trying to be the corpse at the Senate Democrats' funeral.

[The Late P Brooks]

The Kentucky senatorial candidate made national headlines by refusing to say whether she voted for her party's own presidential candidate.

I like this. It's perfectly emblematic of the insipid juvenile gotcha-ism of politics in the 21st century.

Substance is for SUCKERS!

[Mainer2]

...on both sides. her opponents play gotcha because she gave a weaselly answer. Principles ? Substance ?

[John]

If you want tell the truth in response to a simple question like who you voted for, what else are you lying about?

Whatever the substance of Grimes' positions, those positions are only as good as the trust that she actually believes them. We can't know the future. So we can't know for sure what she will do once elected. All we have is her stated positions and our trust that she actually holds those positions and isn't just lying to get elected. So, who she voted for in 2012, before she was trying to get elected, is a reasonable indication of what she actually believes and whether voters can believe her now.

[Raven Nation]

I think she's being hurt more badly by the ads showing her supporters think she is just lying about her support for the coal industry.

[Notorious G.K.C.]

"perfectly emblematic of the insipid juvenile gotcha-ism of politics in the 21st century"

What have we come to, that asking someone if they voted for their party's candidate is a gotcha question.

If I were her I'd say, "of course I voted for my party's candidate. But I disagree with Obama on [give spiel about how she's oh, so different]."

See, answer the question, then turn the discussion in the direction you want.

[Bill Dalasio]

Well, not quite. Half of her entire campaign has been "I'm not like Barack Obama". When you can't even say whether you voted for the guy, that claim rings a little hollow.

[The Late P Brooks]

Even if Himself doesn't care if the Senate turns, his inner circle of courtiers and necromancers do, because without Harry Reid driving a stake through the heart of everything the Congress sends over, it's going to be awfully hard to make a living off of accusations of Congressional do-nothingism.

[John]

^^THIS^^

Also, losing the Senate majority means a lot of hacks and idiot sons of important people lose their jobs. It doesn't seem like it to the normal world, but to these people that is a big fucking deal. These people use politics to eat. And for them winning and losing elections is a life and death matter. To the big Democratic donor whose snowflake is out of a job on Capitol Hill and is now moving home or asking for a bigger check every month or to the aspiring party hack who was hoping to use their position on Senator so and so's staff as a spring board for running for the House in 2016, all of the strategic retreat and "this is going to be good because the Republicans will over reach" is cold comfort.

These people care. It is mostly for selfish and vile reasons, but they care.

[Bill Dalasio]

Also, losing the Senate majority means a lot of hacks and idiot sons of important people lose their jobs.

Well, how many actually lose their jobs remains to be seen. I'm not at all sure that there won't be plenty of Republicans happy to pick up more than a few of them (albeit for the right price). And there's plenty of opportunities for hacks in the executive.

[John]

No. You don't switch teams. If you work for one side on the Hill no one on the other side would ever trust you enough to hire you.

Every Senator has a staff and every committee has a majority and a minority staff. The majority staffs are significantly larger than the minority staff. So going to the minority entails the entire staffs of the Senators or Reps who lose losing their jobs and the majority staff laying people off to get down to the size required by its new status as the minority. A lot of people lose their jobs and careers.

Its good schadenfreude if you are into that stuff.

[Paul.]

Today, like Lena Dunham, I put on my fishnets and voted. Unlike Lena Dunham, I pretty much voted "NO" on everything- despite having trouble with that byzantine referendum that pretty much literally asked "Do you want this OR that?" with a 'yes/no' box at the bottom. then followed up with a second question (I shit you not) that said, "regardless of your yes or no vote above, if you got rammed with one of the above, which would you prefer?"

And to think that we thought voters were too retarded to get: Check the box by the candidate you want to be President.

[Capo]

maybe he just wants to lose the senate at this point so that the talking point that "Republicans just block everything" will actually be true instead of a lie.

[John]

That is true even if the Republicans just own the House. It takes both the House and Senate to pass a bill.