Obama's Lame Ass burnt further blackened in Capital Hill Politics

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How would the White House react to a Democratic midterm meltdown?
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MAJOR GARRETT CBS NEWS
Nov 3, 2014 3:51 PM EST
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Spencer Platt, Getty Images
Vice President Joe Biden predicted Democrats would hold the Senate. The White House, because it has no choice, agreed.

But President Obama's pollsters know the numbers are tilting in favor of Republicans. No Election Night party is planned at the White House. Obama advisers are already girding for a GOP-run Congress. House Republicans will surely gain seats and could see their majority grow to numbers not seen since Harry Truman's presidency (246 in 1946).

GOP control of the Senate would deprive Mr. Obama, for the first time, of a partisan power center in Congress. All that would remain is the veto pen, and executive authority - see immigration.

What message would the White House take from such a midterm meltdown? That the wrong part of the country voted.

"A midterm election is different than a presidential election, particularly this year," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Monday. "The Senate contests... are actually taking place in states the president did not win in the last presidential election. The electorate is different this time than it is in the traditional presidential election, and that will be part of the calculation that's made as we consider what sort of conclusion should be appropriately drawn from the election."

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Earnest said the White House will not draw any broad conclusions from tomorrow's results.

"It would not be wise to draw as broad a conclusion about the outcome of this election as you would from a national presidential election simply by virtue of the map and the fact of the states where this contest is taking place," Earnest said.

Republicans are due to win Senate races in West Virginia, Montana, Arkansas and South Dakota - all states Mr. Obama lost in 2008 and 2012 (all by double-digits in his re-election campaign) and where Democrats have either retired (Jay Rockefeller in West Virginia, Max Baucus in Montana and Tim Johnson in South Dakota) or are endangered, like Mark Pryor in Arkansas.

While it might be easy to dismiss defeats there to embedded red-state hostility to Mr. Obama, the White House cannot apply that to states the president carried in 2008 and 2012 like Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire where Democrats are in serious jeopardy. Earnest deflected when asked about what downbeat results in these states would mean.

"I'm not suggesting that we're in a position where there should be no conclusion that's drawn from the outcome of this election," Earnest said. "Of course, there should be. But that conclusion and any analysis that you do is different than the analysis that you do on a -- on a true national election."

The national tide of Mr. Obama's 2008 victory that helped bring at least three Democrats into the Senate who are now fighting for their political lives - Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, Mark Udall in Colorado and Kay Hagan in North Carolina.

And that underscores another bit of White House midterm pre-spin: Don't blame us.

"The president has also lent his campaign apparatus to these Democratic campaign committees and to individual Democratic candidates to help them identify volunteers and supporters, and to turn out Democratic voters on Election Day," Earnest said, indicating the vaunted Obama voter-identification lists and demographic data that have been provided on an as-needed basis to individual candidates.

But Earnest also said it is up to the candidates themselves, many of whom have decided to keep Mr. Obama at a distance, to turn-out voters and build a winning strategy without the president's visible advocacy. He said all Democrats have "a tried and true ground campaign strategy" behind them that, if used effectively with a solid campaign message, "can provide a two to three point margin that could eventually make up the difference."

"The president had tremendous success in 2012...engaging young people and African-Americans and Hispanics and Asians," Earnest said. "Presumably, those efforts can be replicated to some degree by Democratic candidates who are on the ballot this time."

Replicated to some degree.

Talk about talking down.

The early White House read on possibly dreary midterms? No course correction because it's not a national election and Democrats who lost failed to mobilize voters as well as Mr. Obama.

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