Ironic, don't you think, that Bill Clinton, the president a campaigning Al Gore called "toxic" in 2000, would be cheered to the rafters standing in for a president who is just as toxic in 2014?
Talk about the Maytag repair man -- no Democrat in a competitive race anywhere in America wants to climb on stage with President Barack Obama. Not even one.
Oh, wait. Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, says she knows close-race candidates who do. Unfortunately, she couldn't name even one (see video clip below).
How did this happen?
In 2012 President Obama took the popular vote from Mitt Romney, 50.81 percent to 47.48 percent.
How, in two years, did President Obama tumble so fast -- from recording in 2012 the largest margin of victory since 1996, when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole, 49.24 percent to 40.71 percent?
Why are African-Americans, independents, even women voters ignoring him? It's hard to believe, but his polls are so low that swing voters by a margin of roughly 3-to-1 are backing the GOP.
I'm thinking Obama, achieving a larger political victory than expected in 2012, figured it was safe to parlay that momentum into a potential series of victories that could define the course of the country and his presidential legacy, too.
But things backfired. In two years -- especially in the last year -- the world has become an uncooperative partner.
Here's why we care in Florida:
The Florida Democratic Party's push to get out the black vote is critical to gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist's chances. The question now is, how unpopular is the president in Florida, among one of the strongest voting blocs that brought home his 2008 and 2012 victories in the Sunshine State?
The question became particularly poignant after an incident in Prince Georges County, Md., just over a week ago. Prince George's has been a bastion of support for President Obama -- one of the strongest in the country -- yet, on Sunday, Oct. 19, not everybody who had come to hear Obama speak at a get-out-the-vote rally stayed until the end. About 10 minutes into a 25-minute speech, enough people were trying to leave that reporter Jennifer Epstein of Politico reported there was a traffic jam next to the table where the press pool was sitting.
Why were so many people leaving? Maybe they got their pictures of the president and wanted to go home to watch football. Or maybe they had heard Obama's pleas urging them to get their relatives to the polls many times before. Or maybe the gymnasium seats were particularly uncomfortable. Who knows?
The point is, it looked bad, the press picked up on it, and ever since, the event has been portrayed as a shining example of Obama's growing unpopularity.
Let's look at some of the events and decisions that tripped up this president just in the last year, and could affect the outcome of the only real chance Florida Democrats have of a statewide win in November:
Immigration
Polls show Americans now strongly oppose Obama's immigration policies by 3-to-1, or roughly 50 percent to 15 percent. Two years ago the support was virtually level.
What happened? Some say he pushed his luck too far.
In June and July 2014, 130,000 Central Americans arrived at the Texas border.
"They didnt arrive by accident," said Neil Munro, White House correspondent for The Daily Caller, "but because Obama has effectively invited them up to the border by allowing illegal immigrants in the United States to bring their children into the country after 2010. He and his deputies had quietly changed enforcement and asylum rules, and allowed the migrants to ask the courts for permission to live in the United States."
More and more Central Americans seeking a better life "walked through the Golden Door in 2011, 2012 and 2013" until the flood of 130,000 in 2014 included adults, near-adults and children who "rushed through the courtroom door that Obama opened" for them.
The top priority of the president's second term was to be a new bill that would grant amnesty to illegals and increase immigration. Instead, with little help from the Republicans, he torpedoed what once was the brightest ship in his fleet.
Islamic State
Along came the Islamic States hard-core jihadis earlier this year to fill the military vacuum in northern Iraq. The bloody consequences caused this nation to question Obamas decision to bolt from Iraq in 2010. The subsequent prime-time beheading of two Americans by the jihadis only underlined the decision as poor and weak.
The Ebola crisis
When the Ebola crisis blew up, it forced the president to choose between his progressive commitment to ending national borders and the public's growing demand for better border controls.
What did the president choose? He chose progressivism, rejected pro-American border controls and look what happened: A Liberian flew into Texas, infected two nurses, created an Ebola scare and polls say further damaged Obama's credibility, particularly among women supporters.
Circumventing Congress
As unpopular as Congress is, one thing that gets a president in trouble fast -- especially one that already has shown disdain for the constitutional separation of powers -- is steaming ahead with some executive priority without Congress's full knowledge -- in this case, opening the borders to more illegal aliens than the country has already.
An Obama administration plan to allow as many as 34 million illegal aliens into the United States in five years -- increasing the nation's population by one-third -- was discovered earlier this month, when Breitbart.com found the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) was seeking vendorswho can produce a minimum 4 million blank work permits and green cards per year for five years, and 9 million in the early stages.
David North, policy analyst for the Center for Immigration Studies, said, It is ironic that the lesser details of this operation, the purchase of ID documents via public announcements and competitive bidding, are all done strictly by the book. But the substance -- the proposed legalization of millions of people without congressional authorization -- is handled in a dubious, if not downright illegal manner."
Earlier this year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, delivered a series of floor speeches accusing Obama of acting more and more like a king that the Constitution was designed to replace and imploring colleagues of both parties to push back against his power grabs.
The American people have noticed. So have congressional Democratic candidates and Democratic candidates running for statewide offices. All now are throttled into full damage control.
Which is why President Barack Obama stays at home and former President Bill Clinton is a busy man -- not only in Florida as he was Sunday, but wherever in the nation key elections are tight.
Here's what Ron Fournier, a columnist at the National Journal has to say about Obama's participation in Election 2014:
For his sake and ours, Obama must fire himself. He needs to recognize that, for all of his strengths as a person and a politician, hes shown an astonishing lack of growth on the job. Obama wont evolve unless he replaces enablers with truth-tellers -- advisers unafraid of telling the president hes wrong.
Fournier doesn't expect that to happen and neither do I.
People ask me why I think Republicans will regain the Senate. I could be wrong. God knows, I've been wrong plenty of times before. But this is precisely why: Right now, except for the most devout Democrats who see the man and not the issues, the president is a voter turn-off.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter @NancyLBSmith
