http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/everything-obama-touched-turned-to-crap/article/2555788Obama's reverse Midas touch: 'Everything he touched turned to crap'
By Brian Hughes | November 5, 2014 | 9:57 am
President Obama hardly had the golden touch in the few marquee political contests he got involved in ahead of the 2014 midterms.
Facing tough political headwinds, the president played a do-no-harm strategy, mostly sticking to events with Democratic governors in seemingly safe states.
It turns out that many of those contests weren’t so safe after all.
President Obama saw the Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and his home-state Illinois lose after personally stumping for them in the waning moments before Election Day.
Even the Democrat candidate in Massachusetts was unable to maintain the party’s control of the governor's mansion, although Obama didn’t personally intervene in the race. In Connecticut, Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy, who also embraced Obama on the eve of the midterms, appeared Wednesday morning to have barely held on in the reliably liberal state.
The lone good news for Obama: Democrats held a Michigan Senate seat and won the Pennsylvania gubernatorial race, the other two contests in which the president headlined events for candidates.
It’s a stunning rebuke for the White House, which is now left to confront a new reality in which Obama’s political power is at an all-time low. The question now becomes whether he adopts an even more confrontational tone with Republicans, taunting them with executive action, or moves to the middle on a variety of issues that could alienate his base.
Another “shellacking” in the midterms also confirmed Democratic fears that Obama was more effective at getting himself elected than other progressive candidates.
The president will address the loss of the Senate and his path forward in a news conference Wednesday afternoon.
And some Republicans could only crow about the White House’s misfortune.
“Couldn’t he have visited just a few more states?” quipped a senior House Republican aide. “Everything he touched turned to crap.”
