A STUPID AND SHABBY WHITE HOUSE

The Obama administration did a shabby and stupid thing last week.

If you’re a conservative, you’re probably asking: "Which shabby and stupid thing was that?"  But this was a shabby and stupid thing prominent Democrats think was shabby and stupid.

Virginia and New Jersey have gubernatorial elections next week.  Polls indicate that in Virginia the Republican candidate, Bob McDonnell, is likely to win a comfortable, perhaps a landslide victory over Democrat Creigh Deeds.

The White House evidently agrees with the polls.  Last week the Washington Post ran a story under the headline: "Top Democrats Seek to Shield Obama in Case of Election Loss."  In the story, two administration officials were quoted, anonymously, as saying Mr. Deeds was losing because he didn’t follow the president’s advice.

"A senior administration official said Deeds badly erred on several fronts, including not doing a better job of coordinating with the White House," wrote reporters Rosalind Helderman and Anne Kornblut.  "A second administration official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said: ‘Obama, (national party chairman and Virginia Gov. Tim) Kaine and others had drawn a road map to victory in Virginia.  Deeds chose another path.’"

It is customary in these off-year elections for supporters of the winner to declare the results a referendum on the president, while supporters of the loser say the race was decided by local factors.  And it is customary for the White House to spin the results in whatever way is most beneficial.

But customarily, the spinning doesn’t start until the election is over.  You don’t heap dirt onto a political corpse until he or she is in fact dead.  And that doesn’t happen until the votes are counted.

By prematurely burying Mr. Deeds, Mr. Obama’s minions make the prophecy self fulfilling.  How likely are dispirited Democrats to turn out for Mr. Deeds if the president has given up on him?  Mr. Deeds may be a goner, but diminished turnout can cost Democrats in otherwise winnable down ballot and state legislative races.

"Evidently these ‘anonymous sources’ have decided those hardworking Democrats are just collateral damage in their effort to tell the world that if Deeds doesn’t win, it is because he ignored advice," wrote former Virginia state Democrat chairman Paul Goldman in the Politico yesterday (10/26).

Mr. Goldman compared the treatment of Mr. Deeds by the anonymous White House aides to the "ancient English kings (who would) rip out a subject’s guts and show them to him as he lay slowly bleeding to death."

"It’s a %##@%& shame when our center of government, the White House, won’t talk on the record," said Democrat consultant James "Mudcat" Saunders.  "It’s a lack of courage.  And it goes against transparency that Obama told us last year was going to come out of the White House."

Mr. Saunders disputed the assumption of the anonymous White House aides that Mr. Deeds should more closely have embraced the president.  To do so would have been "devastating" in southwest Virginia, where he lives, Mr. Saunders said.

"For them to say to say if he had listened to us they would win, that’s chicken****," Mr. Saunders said.

The premature dumping on Mr. Deeds is unlikely to shield the president from criticism if Democrats go down to a landslide defeat in Virginia, Mr. Goldman said.  But it makes Democrats around the country uncomfortable:

"The view from Richmond, Va., is that the White House is using Deeds to send every Democrat, and not just Fox News, a message: Forget that ‘we’ thing — to us it’s a ‘me’ thing, 24/7."

That message could have an impact on prospects for Mr. Obama’s top legislative priority.  Polls indicate the president’s notion of health care reform is unpopular with most Americans, and especially so with seniors, the  age demographic most likely to vote in mid-term elections.

If the body count in the down ballot races in Virginia is high — a prospect enhanced by the premature burial of Mr. Deeds — Democrats are going to be more skittish about flouting public opinion on the President’s behalf. 

Mr. Obama and his aides have indicated that for them, loyalty is a one way street.  That is not likely to make Democrats from swing districts — there are 84 (84!) now in Congress who represent districts which were carried either by George W. Bush in 2004 or John McCain last year — eager to walk the plank for him.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.