WI - Sen: Feingold evita a Obama

Los republicanos han encontrado en el hombre de negocios Ron Johnson un eficiente candidato con el que no esperaban dar ni en sus mejores sueños. Por primera vez en cuatro elecciones, el Senador demócrata Russ Feingold, de Wisconsin, héroe de la izquierda del Partido Demócrata y de los movimientos de base, tiene serias posibilidades de ser derrotado. Con altos índices de desempleo en ciudades de clase obrera, estratégicas para los demócratas, el perfil de político profesional de Feingold empieza a ser un problema frente a la experiencia de Johnson en la vida real, como propietario de una empresa dedicada a la manufactura de productos de plástico.

Feingold empieza a marcar distancias (físicas) con Obama. No acompañará al Presidente durante su visita de hoy a Wisconsin con motivo del Día del Trabajo.

Obama comes to Wisconsin, Feingold disappears

(...) President Barack Obama's spending Labor Day afternoon in Milwaukee at an annual union festival. It's quite a party: Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such. Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president.

But Obama and puppetry just aren't the right atmospherics these days, are they?

Feingold, three terms in office and now tied with a plastics manufacturer no one heard of five months ago, will be at Laborfest earlier in the day. By afternoon, he'll have scampered far from Obama, to a parade in his hometown, Janesville, where the General Motors bailout didn't save the truck plant and unemployment is now double-digit. A spokesman said Feingold asked the White House to change its schedule, but you know how these things go.

Ask yourself: If you were an embattled senator, famously progressive and customarily elected by students, unions, peaceniks and others who dig giant protest puppets, and your state was going to be visited by a president who two years ago drew swooning arena-sized crowds of just such voters, do you think you could rearrange your schedule to absorb his magic?

This is the measure of Obama's fall: Even senators who define the Democrats' leftward edge act like he's got cooties. (...)