LEGACY?:

[M]embers of his party are abandoning him. In the last several weeks, his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has obliquely criticised his foreign policy, while his former defence secretary, Leon Panetta, has been more direct in his ingratitude: he accused the president of demonstrating weakness because of his new-found reluctance to use American military force around the world.

On the campaign trail, it has become a game of political obfuscation for Democratic candidates when they are asked about Obama. In Kentucky, Senate challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes refuses to say whether she voted for the president and can barely find it in herself to say a good word about him. Kay Hagan, senator for North Carolina, could come up with only a single example of the president's strong leadership (the cleanup of the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, of all things), and in Alaska, when asked if he'd voted for the titular head of his party, senator Mark Begich said that he had - but that it didn't matter since the president was "not relevant". And these are Obama's political allies.

But the distancing goes beyond politics. Democrats are walking away from Obama's accomplishments - and none more so than his signature achievement, Obamacare. Grimes blasts the incoherent position of her opponent, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who wants to repeal the policy "root and branch" while keeping the popular healthcare exchange in Kentucky that is a result of, and sustained by, Obamacare. But that doesn't mean she is vigorously defending the law. While other Democrats have spoken positively about some aspects of Obamacare, few are running on the issue, or trumpeting the good that it is already doing.

In a year in which the biggest challenge facing Democrats is getting their voters to the polls, this is a strategy that seems perversely oriented to alienate core Democratic voters - particularly African-Americans, who are Obama's strongest backers and the most reliable Democratic constituency. By refusing to back the policies that define the party, they send an implicit message to voters that the unceasing criticism of Democrats from Republicans is in some way legitimate and accurate. 

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