Nobody’s buying what Alaska Democrat Mark Begich is selling. Faced with a tough reelection fight, Begich is telling anyone who will listen that he’s “a thorn” in President Obama’s, uh, behind.
Sure.
This is coming from the guy who has voted 97 percent of the time with Obama. Needless to say, nobody is buying it. The Washington Post describes Begich as “not actually that well known for anything,” and:
In the Senate, Begich is a junior figure, moving through the chamber’s power structure at the speed of a mastodon trapped in a glacier. Over five years, just one of his bills has been passed into law. It renamed a courthouse in Anchorage.
And this morning, the Washington Examiner pointed out Begich has never had a vote on one of his amendments, bolstering the argument that he has not been the thorn he claims to be and, worse, has been an ineffective lawmaker for Alaska.
On MSNBC, Ron Fournier knocked Begich’s approach as “ham-handed”:
“We see this every time we’re in the sixth year of a President’s term, especially when a President is unpopular. His Party wants to distance themselves from the President, but the problem is you can’t. I mean, Begich is a Democrat and is he really going to make his campaign about being a thorn in the side of President Obama? The problem is, the best person to be that is the Republican. He’s got to run on who he is and not distance himself so obviously and ham-handedly from the White House.”