Monday, November 2, 2009

White House Prepares for Disappointing Election Day -

(ABCnews).You can tell that the White House isn't expecting such a great election day -- Democrats are down in recent polls in the governor's races in both Virginia and New Jersey -- both by how much officials are insisting the outcomes have no relevance to the President and how much they're trying to change focus to the conservative in-fighting in the special election for an upstate New York congressional seat.

“I think that what you’re seeing here today is the rebirth of getting the Republican Party back to where we were,” Hoffman recently proclaimed.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the grass roots conservative movement "may be where the energy is in the Republican Party, but it's certainly not a view on which you can build a majority party.”

On CNN, House Minority Leader John Boehner characterized it as “a political rebellion going on in America.This rebellion is by people who really have not been actively involved in the political process,” Boehner said.

This is what President Obama is trying to fight as he campaigns in New Jersey for incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine, whose disapproval rating in the state is 52% -- who's locked in a tight fight with Republican nominee Chris Christie, a former US Attorney.

The White House insists that these elections are driven by local issues -- property taxes in New Jersey, transporation in Virginia -- and the strengths and weaknesses of the actual candidates. They say no one should judge tomorrow's results as relevant at all to President Obama, who enjoys majority approval ratings in both New Jersey and Vigrinia.

On Friday White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, “Whatever the results are, I don't think they portend a lot in dealing with the future.”

But not everyone is buying it.

“The president has gone into these races, has raised money for candidates, Democratic campaign committees have raised money. So,to say that these contests are irrelevant is kind of whistling past the graveyard,” Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report told ABC News.

And there are national trends that no wise White House would ignore: anti-incumbent sentiment, concern if not angst about the economy, a majority of the American people thinking the U.S. is on the wrong track.

Campaigning over the weekend in New Jersey, Obama said, “This is a tough period in the economy and tough in NJ there are a lot of people out there who understandably feel cynical and think change should happen overnight. All of you have to be ambassadors for change.”

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"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty" (Churchill)