From Ben Smith we learn that the only reason President Obama didn't help Coakley over a week ago, when people here in DC were already quite concerned about the race, is because Coakley just didn't ask the President for help. Had she asked, he'd have done something to preserve his 60th filibuster proof (sometimes) vote in the Senate, to preserve health care reform, to preserve his entire agenda. But because she didn't, he didn't.
He was asked whether Obama should have done more than make an eleventh-hour effort to head off a defeat that would be calamatous for his agenda.Mother may I?
"The White House did everything we were asked to do," he said. "I think if we had been asked earlier, we would have responded earlier."
Then, from Jack Tapper at ABC News we learn the following:
While he refused to answer most questions about the close Massachusetts Senate race, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs today acknowledged that President Obama "was both surprised and frustrated" with how hotly contested the Bay State special election has become.I think the more appropriate thing to say before the voters have even finished voting, before the ballots have even been counted, is "we believe that Martha Coakley is going to win." Period. End of story.
Gibbs said he would wait until tomorrow to discuss the results of the election, but said the president was "not pleased" with how much the Democratic candidate, attorney general Martha Coakley, is struggling.
He said the White House didn't need a special election to note the "tremendous amount of upset and anger" among voters about "where we are economically... In many ways we're here because of that upset and anger."
