Dems’ Control of Senate May Hinge on Obama

With 23 Democratic-held Senate seats being contested next year, and the party having suffered huge losses in last year’s elections, the party is rightly concerned that it will lose its three-seat majority in the Senate. And the party’s fate may well depend on President Barack Obama’s popularity, Politico reports.

Of the 23 Democratic seats in play, 18 of them are in states that Obama won in 2008. So his ability to inspire voters to turn out for him and the rest of the Democratic ticket in those states may be Democrats’ only hope for retaining control of the Senate.

But luckily for Republicans now is a different time. “You can’t go back to 2008, the fresh face, the vision of hope. It’s a different world. You’d have to whitewash your brain of 2010 to even put them in the same category,” former Republican Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman told The Hill.