Over the past month, David Perdue’s main, (and really only) attack on Michelle Nunn has been that she is an ally of President Barack Obama, and that if elected she will toe the Democratic line with him. An effective line considering the president’s plummeting approval ratings in the state. Nunn has done her best to fight back, most notably with the below ad which ties her to President George H. W. Bush.
Of course, no good ad goes unpunished – the former president’s spokesman quickly made it clear that he didn’t want the elder Bush’s image to be used as a part of Nunn’s campaign.
In any case, the ad is out and the damage is done, an effective rebuttal to Perdue’s continued attempts to tie his Democratic opponent to the Democratic White House. On Monday, though, President Obama himself may have made life a whole lot more difficult for Nunn and the rest of the Southern Democrats locked into heated races.
On Monday while making an appearance on Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show, Obama was asked about Democratic candidates who have been forced to avoid him in their campaigns. Said the president about such candidates, “it is difficult for them to have me in the state because the Republicans will use that to try to fan Republican turnout”. An astute point, and certainly not one that would raise eyebrows.
“The bottom line is though,” the president continued, “these are all folks who vote with me; they have supported my agenda in Congress; they are on the right side of minimum wage; they are on the right side of fair pay; they are on the right side of rebuilding our infrastructure; they’re on the right side of early childhood education.”
Oops. You can go ahead and cut off the second half of that quote, because the first part is what is going to be cut out and inserted into ads in every state with a tight race, Georgia chief among them. In a race that Nunn has run cleanly and effectively thus far, a fatal blow may have just been dealt by a power beyond her control.