Pirate's Cove

Why? Because “everyone is shitting on him”

Can Obama Reboot?
Does he even want to?

Too answer those questions, no and no. He is who he is, and he seems to prefer fighting over governing. He likes to be president, not do president.

Barack Obama is antsy. His aides can see it when he alights from Air Force One from the all-too-occasional campaign trips he has taken this fall. There’s a sigh, an unhappy-camper body language when he finds himself back in the depressing slipstream of Ebola confabs and national-security-crisis-of-the-day meetings. The vibe, according to people in his orbit, is not so much of being checked out as of being fed up.

“[I] do like campaigning. … It’s fun,” Obama said on Thursday, speaking wistfully at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Michaud in Maine. But the Michaud event was the exception, not the rule. “There have been $2 billion in ads shitting on the president and no one to defend him,” a senior administration official told us. “He is very fired up to get this campaign behind him, to run through the tape.”

Certainly, most Democrats want nothing to do with him. He’s the idiot who killed the albatross. This is a situation of his own making.

“I sense a certain fatalism there, and it’s disturbing,” says a former adviser on Obama’s campaign who, like many others we talked with for this story, requested anonymity. “There’s a sense that ‘I’ve tried everything, and look where it got me.’ People misread it as disengagement. It’s frustration. But who cares? It’s a bad mind-set.” Another Obama veteran adds, “the bully pulpit is gone, maybe forever.”

All the man has to do is look in the mirror, and see that the problems start with him. Right from the get go, he passed bad policy, and did all he could to foment partisan division.

Meanwhile, what should we look for tonight?

(The Hill) As a long campaign season draws to an end, Republicans are on the cusp of winning Senate control, while Democrats are girding for what could be a “bad, long night.”

“It seems like the late-breakers are not headed in the right direction,” admitted Democratic strategist Achim Bergmann, noting Iowa and Colorado in particular as troubling states for Democrats.

Recent nationwide polling has shown Republicans taking an advantage with young voters and eating into Democrats’ historical advantage with women. The party has invested more than $60 million in its turnout efforts to try to offset expected drop-offs in key Democratic constituencies, but Republicans have made commensurate investments in their own get-out-the-vote operations.

What’s more, President Obama’s approval rating stands at just 42 percent nationwide, according to the most recent Gallup average. That’s enough, Bergmann said, to make the mood in his office of Democratic operatives “very dark.”

Actually, it’s 41%, but, hey, why quibble over 1%?

Republicans are all but certain to win open, Democratic-held seats in West Virginia and Montana. They’re also favored in South Dakota, where former Gov. Mike Rounds (R) has regained a solid lead despite a late play from Democrats to make it competitive.

The GOP also has the edge in Arkansas, where Sen. Mark Pryor (D), despite running a strong campaign, looks likely to fall victim to an unfavorable climate and challenger Rep. Tom Cotton (R). Polling has largely given Republican Dan Sullivan a lead over Sen. Mark Begich (D) in Alaska, though operatives from both parties warn the state is notoriously tough to poll.

There’s a good chance the GOP will take either the Colorado seat away Mark Uterus, er, Udall, and/or the Iowa seat, as Joni Ernst surges. Mary Landrieu (D-La) will most likely lose, but will GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy garner enough votes to avoid a runoff? The Georgia Senate race may very well end up in a runoff, as well.

Of course, Democrats are already spinning the losses. There’s been lots of talking about “compromise” (drink everytime you hear that on the MSM today and through the week), reaching across the aisle, and all the things they weren’t worried about when they controlled the Senate. The filibuster will suddenly become an important way to Defend Democracy.