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The musical “Paint Your Wagon” has a classic song called “They Call the Wind Maria.” This election season President Barack Obama’s theme song might be “They Call the Prez Pariah,” since Democrats are avoiding him and fleeing in political terror at being photographed with him.
In this political season, Hope and Change has been replaced by Hope the Voters Think We’re Estranged. The Hill reports:
Democrats in tough reelection races have a blunt message for President Obama: Keep away.
Obama’s approval ratings are in the basement and show no signs of improving, so Democrats are keeping their distance. On the stump, in campaign ads and at fundraisers, Obama’s absence is increasingly conspicuous.
Democrats are voicing their displeasure with his policies and campaign advisers are telling candidates to avoid being photographed with him, so as to deny Republicans effective visuals for campaign ads.
“It’s a no-brainer,” said one operative who works for a senator up for reelection in 2014. “The second term has been a bit of a disaster, his approval ratings are the lowest of his presidency and Washington is in disarray.”
And, as in political life, politicians hope voters will not hold their previous attitudes or images against them. Or (for the moment) even remember them. So they opt for a dramatic shift, and hope no one notices:
Many of the Democratic senators elected in 2008 rode to office on Obama’s coattails. Six years later, they’re asking, “Barack who?”
Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) last week avoided being at his own fundraiser while Obama was there, excusing himself on the grounds that he had to attend votes at the Capitol.
Because a Senator will never EVER will miss a vote for something as crass as a fundraiser…
It is not just Senate Democrats who are displeased with the president. Some House members have expressed dissent over his approach to the surge of young illegal immigrants streaming across the southern border.
Last week, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) described Obama’s behavior over the border crisis as “aloof,” “detached” and “bizarre.”
Referring to a staged photo opportunity for news media when Obama drank beer and played pool in Colorado while thousands of Latino children crossed the southern border illegally, Cuellar added, “I mean, the optics are just horrible.”
The centrist Texas congressman was not the only critic. Liberal Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told MSNBC that “the borderlands deserve a presidential visit.”
He added, “I think a visit by the president is reaffirming that the borderlands along the southwest border are vital and important to this nation. So I think a visit would be important and very symbolic.”
And then The Hill makes this understatement:
Many Democrats in Congress complain that Obama is indifferent to their concerns.
The fact is, by all accounts Barack Obama will not go down as the most politically skillful President in dealing with Congress. It’s not just what seems to come across to members of Congress as an aloofness when compared to some other Presidents. Just as George H.W. Bush gave the impression that governing was his thing, diplomacy was his thing, but running in an election campaign was almost an unseemly, lowering-yourself, pandering thing one had to do (in contrast to Bill Clinton who seemed to be having the time of his life pressing the flesh and asking for votes), Obama gives the impression that dealing with, wooing and winning over Congress is an intrusion on his job, rather than a difficult part of his job description.
There are few “Profiles in Courage” in politics in either party anymore, so it’s no surprise that “Flight of the Bumblebee” is today displaced by “Flight of the Democrats.”
Thoughtful pundits such as Ronald Brownstein may correctly point out that it’s hard for anyone to be President these days of not just polarization but a polarization many are proud of and jealously defend and try to perpetuate. Or that Truman got terrible poll numbers and was eventually vindicated by history.
But the political bottom line is the here and now, and the polling trends are not good for Barack Obama. Here’s Real Clear Politic’s average:
Here’s Pollster’s graph at The Huffington Post:
Meanwhile, a poll by Gallup shows that Obama in a sense is a uniter not a divider: his highest numbers are among Muslims and Jews:
Seventy-two percent of U.S. Muslims approved of the job President Barack Obama was doing as president during the first six months of 2014, higher than any other U.S. religious group Gallup tracks. Mormons were least approving, at 18%. In general, majorities of those in non-Christian religions — including those who do not affiliate with any religion — approved of Obama, while less than a majority of those in the three major Christian religious groups did.
The results are based on aggregated data from more than 88,000 Gallup Daily tracking interviews conducted in the first six months of 2014 — a time when the president averaged 43% job approval among all Americans. Gallup interviewed 552 Muslims and at least 1,700 respondents in every other religious group during this time.
The United States remains a predominantly Christian nation, with roughly half of Americans identifying with a Protestant religion and another quarter identifying as Catholics. Thus, the opinions of these Christian groups are by far the most influential in determining Obama’s overall ratings.
The relative rank order of the religious groups on job approval has been consistent throughout Obama’s presidency. In fact, the current rank order, with Muslims most approving and Mormons least, exactly matches the order seen over the more than five years he has been in office since January 2009.
But even among the religious groups making up part of his winning coalition his numbers are down.
Moreover, current job approval among each religious subgroup is between five and seven percentage points lower than the full 2009-2014 average for each. Obama’s current 43% overall job approval average is five points lower than his 48% average so far in his presidency.
So, in political terms, Democrats don’t see a winning political enterprise so as they distance themselves, put up political “KEEP OUT” signs, and come up with excuses why they can’t appear with him when he’s in their state, the image they’re conjuring up is of this:
To be sure, Obama still has two years left on his term, and one of this biggest political allies have been far right Republican conservatives who often wind up driving voters to vote Democrat due to over-the-top rhetoric or seemingly working 24/7 to alienate groups ripe for Republican harvesting.
But at this moment, Democrats are trying to survive what they perceive as a politically sinking ship.
After all, it’s only the captain that’s supposed to go down with the ship.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.