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Bill Clinton still has touch as he aids President Obama, former president is
back to save Democrats
BY Kenneth R. Bazinet and Michael
Mcauliff
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Sunday, June 13th 2010, 4:00
AM
Chernin/AP
President Barack Obama
embraces former President Bill Clinton in September. The two have grown closer
since.
WASHINGTON - It's Bubba to the rescue.
Former President Bill Clinton's outsized presence is already a force on the
2010 campaign trail as Democrats scramble to save their hides in a rough
political climate.
He almost single-handedly reversed the fortunes of embattled Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln last week against an
insurgent primary challenger.
This week, he's off to Las
Vegas to hold a campaign rally for Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in
a hard fight to win reelection.
"About the only thing they haven't asked him to do is don a wet suit, put a
knife in his mouth and dive into the ocean to plug that oil spill," said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn-Queens), who is engaged to Hillary Clinton's closest aide.
"The guy has definitely still got a magic touch," said Weiner.
In Pennsylvania six weeks ago, Clinton was vital to
helping Rep. Mark Critz win a special election for
Democrats in a conservative district where he had trailed.
"He was the closer," Jennifer Crider, spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said
of Bubba.
In Lincoln's race, the longtime Clinton pal had run afoul of anti-imcumbent
rage and was so far behind Lt. Gov. Bill Halter that her supporters at the White House all but wrote her off.
"Bill Clinton went in there, he got people to calm
down and think about all the things Blanche Lincoln had done for them," said Chris Lehane, a Democratic consultant and one-time
Clinton White House aide. "He is able to relate to regular people better than
anyone, and pulled it out."
He did the same for Democrat Chad Causey in the state. Causey was polling
around 25% when Clinton started running ads for him. Causey won.
"They ran the Clinton radio ads up and down the eastern part of the state and
it put Causey over the top," said one admiring White House operative.
President Obama's political team plans to rely on
Clinton heavily in the fall, but they also say they won't leash the Big Dog too
tightly.
"We won't micromanage the former President," one insider said. "He's going to
do what he's going to do and it will be helpful."
From the White House perspective, Clinton will be an invaluable,
not-so-secret weapon, stumping, raising cash, and firing up voters in both white
blue-collar and African-American communities.
That last is a key point for Clintonistas. They felt the press unfairly
declared black voters had turned on him during his wife's failed campaign
against Obama in 2008.
But black voters in Arkansas came out for him. "The blowhards were
wrong after all," gloated one Clinton pal .
Obama will be on the stump this fall too, but Clinton brings an advantage a
sitting President can't match. He can go wherever he wants.
Obama, for instance, would have a hard time campaigning in Gulf states with
the oil-spill crisis ongoing, Lehane said.
"You just don't know where things will be in the fall," Lehane said. "But you
know Clinton will not be constrained."
"I don't know of anyone running in as tough election this year that wouldn't
want President Clinton at their side," agreed Weiner. "I do know a handful of
places where President Obama would not be helpful" because of the realities of
incumbency.
"I don't think there's a hot race this year where you're not going to have
candidates clamoring for Bill Clinton to help," said Weiner.
With Thomas M. DeFrank
Read more: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/06/13/2010-06-13_bubbas_back_to_save_the_dems_reach_out__touch_voters_sign_him_up.html#ixzz0qrH5pZxc