Obama on the Midterms
President Obama spoke with George Stephanopoulos yesterday in Cleveland, and the interview is being aired this morning on ABC’s Good Morning America. It was a wide-ranging talk in which the president stood firm on letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans lapse, spoke against Pastor Terry Jones’s plan to burn a bunch of Korans this weekend, and said a few words about the November midterms:
“„OBAMA: I think, I am very confident that if people know what the choice is, if people take a look at what Democrats stand for and what Republicans stand for, who we’re fighting for, and who they’re fighting for, then we will win. And so, my challenge, and the challenge of every Democratic candidate who’s out there is just making sure the people understand there’s a choice here.
“„STEPHANOPOULOS: And now you’re–
“„**OBAMA: **If the election is a referendum on are people satisfied about the economy as it currently is, then we’re not going to do well. Because I think everybody feels like this economy needs to do better than it’s been doing.
This basically encapsulates both party’s positions and best hopes in a nutshell. Republicans will hammer Democratic incumbents over the state of the economy, while Democrats will place an emphasis, as Obama did, on the word *choice. *They’ll try to remind voters that Republicans haven’t exactly been proposing a lot of bright ideas to make it better (besides returning to the policies of the Bush era).
On generic ballots, it’s clear that Republicans enjoy a big advantage — which might make the GOP wish it had more candidates who were, well, more generic. The only hope for Democrats is that the views of individual Republican candidates like Nevada’s Sharron Angle, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, or Colorado’s Ken Buck will prove too radical or wacky for voters to tolerate.
