A Most Pivotal Election

A Most Pivotal Election

Democratic candidates kept twisting away from Obama and changing the subject. Republicans didn’t cooperate.

By Fred Barnes in the Wall Street Journal

President Obama is famous for proclaiming a “pivot” to a new issue—to the economy, to jobs, to Asia. By my count he has announced more than 20 pivots during his presidency, invariably to matters that bring political benefits and away from those that don’t.

The pivot strategy has also been a major feature of Democratic campaigns that conclude with Tuesday’s midterm election. And it is understandable why Democrats have employed it. Redirection is the best response they could come up with to the Republican charge that they are closely tied to Mr. Obama and his policies.

Democrats would rather not discuss their relationship with the president, much less dwell on it. He is unpopular and so are his major policies (ObamaCare, national security, the economy). So candidates pivot to another issue. We saw this strategy at work in Louisiana’s Senate race last week. Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu , trailing Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy in most polls, suddenly raised the explosive issues of racism and sexism. She insisted that racism makes Mr. Obama unpopular in Louisiana and sexism causes her re-election to be a struggle.

Pivoting can be a clever strategy—when it works. And no Democrat has been more effective at adopting it than Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina. Six months ago, she was viewed as vulnerable, even doomed. Not only had she voted for the president’s health-care law, but she had also declared publicly that North Carolinians could keep their current insurance policies and doctors. For a while, she hid from reporters to avoid talking about her vote.

Republicans and super PACs supporting them attacked her relentlessly. But once Thom Tillis won the Republican nomination in July, she pulled off a successful pivot. In TV ads and campaign appearances, she made his controversial role as state House speaker a leading issue in the Senate contest. Ms. Hagan has led in nearly every poll since then. But her pivoting success is the exception.

The story of this year’s campaign in the dozen or so races that will decide who controls the Senate is uncomplicated. Republicans have a single talking point: Their Democratic opponents are partisan clones of Mr. Obama. Democrats often rely on one response: Pivot to an issue that has nothing to do with the president.

To win the Senate, Republicans need to gain six seats. Given that key races are in conservative or swing states, they have a good chance of achieving this goal. Republicans have controlled the House since 2010 and could pick up as many as 10 to 12 more seats in the lower chamber.

Embracing Mr. Obama is not an option for Democrats in either red or toss-up states. He has become the symbol of what’s wrong with Washington. By itself this represents a victory for Republicans. Previously, House Republicans had been held responsible—by the media as well as by Democrats—for the deadlock on Capitol Hill.

Watching Democrats struggle to escape Mr. Obama’s ideological grip was the most fascinating aspect of the campaign. They have tried everything from identifying with prominent Republicans to openly rejecting Mr. Obama.

In Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall has ignored other issues to concentrate on the alleged “war on women” waged by Republicans in general and supposedly with special zeal by Rep. Cory Gardner, his GOP opponent. But after Mr. Gardner softened his stance on abortion and contraception, that issue lost its sting. Mr. Udall’s pivot had failed.

That left him adrift. He claimed to strike fear in Mr. Obama’s heart. He called himself “the last person they want to see coming at the White House.” Meanwhile, Mr. Obama came to Denver to raise money for Mr. Udall. As a campaign tool, Republicans rate the record of incumbent Democrats voting with the president. They pegged Mr. Udall at 99%.

In Alaska, Sen. Mark Begich characterized himself as a buffer between his state and the Obama administration. “I’ll be a thorn in his ass,” Mr. Begich said, referring to Mr. Obama. This boast “hardly squares with a voting record 98 percent in sync with the White House,” noted Carl Cannon, the Washington bureau chief of RealClearPolitics.

Mr. Begich also portrayed himself as a partner of Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and featured her image in a TV ad. Ms. Murkowski objected. She said she wants a Republican elected to the Begich seat. “Sen. Begich should run on his own record and not attempt to deceive the public into believing he has support that does not exist,” a letter from her lawyers said.

Like Mr. Begich, other Democrats pivoted their entire political identity. In Virginia, Sen. Mark Warner ran for re-election as a bipartisan senator eager to work across the aisle. He bragged in campaign appearances about his endorsement by former Republican Sen. John Warner.

In her Senate campaign in Georgia, Democrat Michelle Nunn used a photo of President George H.W. Bush in a TV ad, despite Mr. Bush’s request that she not do so. A Bush spokesman said her defiance of Mr. Bush’s wishes “is very disappointing because it’s so disrespectful.”

In the final debate between Ms. Nunn and Republican David Perdue on Sunday, she went out of her way to associate herself with Mr. Bush, even after Mr. Perdue mentioned that the former president had endorsed him. As Byron York of the Washington Examiner noted, Ms. Nunn seemed unfazed by that information.

When Mr. Perdue tied her to Mr. Obama and his agenda, Ms. Nunn dismissed the notion of a serious connection to the current president, though both are Democrats. “I’ve spent about 45 minutes of my life with President Obama,” she said. “I’ve spent seven years working for President George H.W. Bush’s Point of Light organization.”

Over the weekend, Mr. Obama was still trying to pivot, this time to make the campaign agenda more liberal. In a message entitled “emailing for $5,” he wrote: “The American people are with us on all the big issues. They want to break the gridlock. They want to raise the minimum wage, pass equal pay laws, and close all those tax loopholes for millionaires. You know it. I know it. The polls show it.”

But Democratic candidates in pivotal states—they didn’t know it or show it.

Mr. Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, is a Fox News commentator.