So the Telegraph is reporting that President Obama is threatening to withdraw support for Democrats that don’t vote for the Healthcare bill. In light of the news today, that this might get passed by some sort of procedural shenanigans, who knows what that means. But for the sake of simplicity and so that dummy-dumb-dummies like myself can understand let’s assume that we are taking about a “straight up or down” vote on the Senate Healthcare bill.
In this context we are hearing that the President is threatening members of his own party that if they don’t support him on this he won’t support them for re-election. Traditionally the presence of the President has meant a huge fund raising opportunity. The President can bring in tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single event. This would normally take a small army of volunteers and months of time to accomplish. So having the President as a member of your party and being willing to come support you, has been a traditional political trump card. So normally this would be a huge deal, however is it this year?
Thus far in the past twelve months every race that Obama has shown up to “help” has failed. His appearances have seemed more like the grim reaper rearing his ugly head instead of the cavalry there to save the day. I believe Greta Van Susteren called Obama appearances “the kiss of death.” Granted there haven’t been that many of them but two major Governorships and a Senate seat from Massachusetts are hardly anything to guff at.
Now to a simple minded man like me, it would seem that were I a democrat in congress and I was worried about what this vote might mean for my reelection chances. I would think that voting no and not having the President show up would be a good thing. In fact that might be reason enough to vote no. However in the world of Washington politics, up is often down. So, I can understand many members of congress missing this miniscule trend and its implications. That said, in the world of midterm elections they may find that this point might have been what would have saved them their political careers.
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