WHEN YOU’RE IN an election race against the leader of the opposition party, you generally look for every advantage you can get.
For Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate for the Kentucky Senate seat, the one ace she may have had up her sleeve was being in the same party as the most powerful man in the world.
However, despite Barack Obama’s long-running battles with Grimes’ opponent Mitch McConnell, the Democrats decided that the President was too electorally toxic in this year’s midterms.
So, while the Clintons, Vice-President Joe Biden and even the First Lady Michelle Obama stumped for candidates across the country, Obama was sidelined.
The Republican Party’s strategy of nationalising the campaign, making every race from Senate to House right down to school board about Obama, meant that Democratic candidates ran from the President.
To the extent that Grimes, a white woman, felt the need to point out that she is not Obama, a black man.
So, did it work?
It did not.
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