The sick cult of personality continues.
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www.politico.com
Obama puts Reid in the spotlight
By: Carol E. Lee and Molly Ball
October 22, 2010 10:46 PM EDT LAS VEGAS — Of all the races in the country this year, none is as important to President Barack Obama as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s reelection campaign.
The race carries unrivaled symbolism for Obama, who would emerge even more politically wounded than anticipated if Republicans defeat his top Democrat in the Senate.
The stakes were in full display Friday night at an outdoor rally in Las Vegas, when Obama — whose name has been chanted over the past three days by crowds at events from Seattle to Los Angeles — made a rare move and led the crowd in a chant of “Har-ry!”
“I appreciate everybody saying Obama,” the president said as thousands of supporters screamed “O-bam-a!” “But I want everybody to say Harry,” Obama yelled, leading them on moments after he stood on the stage with Reid, a former boxer, holding his hand in the air as though he had won a fight.
Reid is locked in a tight race against Republican Sharron Angle, a tea party favorite who has continued to be a force despite several high-profile campaign missteps. Obama made his fourth trip to Nevada Friday for a week-before-the-election rally and fundraiser to help Reid squeak out a victory despite low popularity in his home state and an adverse political climate.
The president vouched for Reid, whose opponent is running ads suggesting he got rich off of his position in the Senate, as an advocate for the middle class.
“Harry has never forgotten what it’s like to grow up in Searchlight, Nev. He knows what it’s like to be poor. He knows what it’s like to work hard. He knows what it’s like to hit some bumps in the road,” Obama said. “Neither Harry and I were born with a silver spoon in our mouths. Our families were working folk.”
For Obama, Reid’s campaign has all the elements that have made this election cycle a tumultuous one for Democrats.
His challenger has tea party backing, and few places in the nation have been as hard hit by the economic crisis than Nevada, where the unemployment rate is more than14 percent and the rate of foreclosures is the highest in the nation.
Reid’s race raises the stakes for Obama because of unique circumstances where all it could take for him to win would be large Democratic turnout — the president’s main 2010 role — and because it’s been cast as referendum on the White House’s big-ticket victories, all of which Reid helped muscle through: health care reform, financial regulatory reform, the economic stimulus package.
Reid is counting on minor-party candidates, including a Tea Party ballot line, and Nevada’s unique “none of the above” voting option to siphon votes from Angle, who also has low popularity in Nevada. Political strategists, including those working on Reid’s campaign, believe the dynamic would allow Reid to win with substantially less than 50 percent of the vote. Democrats have a registration edge of 60,000 more voters than Republicans, a 5-point advantage that's decreased from more than 100,000 two years ago.
To get there, Reid is counting on Democratic turnout, powered by his statewide campaign organization, which he largely built in 2008 and thought would pay off for him in 2010. Indeed, the Obama organizational juggernaut was kept in place as Reid's reelection geared up.
In that sense, Reid’s election offers a test of whether Obama’s 2008 grass-roots organization will remain a force in 2012.
Obama, who arrived in Las Vegas after campaign stops in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, tried to inspire Nevada Democrats not to wait for Nov. 2 to cast their ballots. He reminded the crowd at a middle school in Las Vegas that early voting is already underway.
“You have to vote everybody,” he said. He even directed them to a nearby polling center and told them what time to be there. “Don’t wait,” he said. “Don’t wait.”
Angle is hoping she can capitalize on Obama’s visit as well. Her campaign is employing the same strategy as Reid’s: using the president to help drive turnout.
Obama won Nevada by 12 percentage points in 2008 after the state had twice swung for George W. Bush. But just 39 percent of Nevada voters held a favorable view of Obama in an August poll. And new jobs figures released Friday showed that Nevada still continues to be the state with the highest unemployment rate: 14.4 percent.
To coincide with the president’s visit, Angle’s campaign released a video juxtaposing Obama’s campaign promises with Nevada’s dire statistics.
“Harry Reid is the closest thing this election to Barack Obama’s name being on the ballot,” Angle spokesman Jarrod Agen said.
Knocking off the Senate majority leader of the same party as a sitting president has strong political significance. Majority leaders are often election-year targets for the opposing party. The most recent case was in 2004, when Republicans defeated Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, an Obama mentor.
The White House has poured many of its resources into Reid’s reelection bid. Obama’s visit follows Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Reno, Nev., on Wednesday, and before Nov. 2, Reid will get a campaign stop from first lady Michelle Obama, who has already done an event with him in the state.
But White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was reluctant to characterize Reid’s race as the most important one on the ballot.
“Senator Reid is somebody who has obviously done a lot to ensure our success in the United States Senate [and] was a supporter, somebody who urged the president to run very early,” Gibbs told reporters when asked about the significance of the election. “And it’s a very important race.”
Gibbs, speaking aboard Air Force One Thursday during Obama’s campaign swing, also took a few shots at Angle, who had previously advocated the elimination of Social Security and was recently caught on video telling a group of Hispanic high school students that they looked “Asian.”
“Look at the number of controversial comments that get made,” he said, describing her as “somebody who seems to be well out of the mainstream of where voters are in the state of Nevada.”
Reid, who reminded voters that Obama visited Nevada 22 times during the 2008 campaign, used some of his time at the podium Friday night to attack Angle’s views, calling them “extreme” and “dangerous.”
Facing a state in dire economic conditions, he said he’s got “important issues” on his mind: “jobs, jobs and more jobs.”
And he asked voters to let him keep his.
© 2010 Capitol News Company, LLC
