Last week was not a good week to be a Democrat; it was especially bad if you were a sitting Democratic president.
Two special elections were held last Tuesday to determine who would represent Nevada's 2nd House District and New York's 9th House District.
The latter was previously held by Twitter celebrity and former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner. For those who are unaware, Weiner resigned from his seat after admitting to releasing revealing photos on Twitter.
Republicans took the Nevada seat, which was no surprise to anyone given its solid GOP record.
But, to the surprise of many political analysts, the New York seat thought to be a Democratic stronghold went to Republican Robert Turner.
Yet, these two events are not the only thing currently plaguing Democrats.
In an effort to promote "green jobs," the federal government, under the direction of the Obama administration, loaned $535 million to a California solar company called Solyndra.
The company was praised by officials in the administration as a sound investment.
Earlier this month, however, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy and laid off more than 1,000 workers.
For a president who is trying to promote a plan to create more jobs, this setback creates an image of incompetence created by political cronyism. The California company was politically well-connected, which has spurred many lawmakers to launch an investigation of how the company was selected for this loan guarantee in the first place.
There has been a lot of discussion about the ability of government to pick winners and losers in an economy through tax breaks and subsidies.
But when the government cannot even pick a winner, the best press secretary would have trouble favorably spinning the situation.
However, the punches do not stop with this scandal.
The editorial board of Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, recently hinted to the president that he might not want to consider running for re-election.
Stephen Chapman of the Tribune's editorial board said Obama "is under no compulsion to run for re-election" and that it "might be the sensible thing to do."
Chapman later gave a run-around endorsement of current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Many on the left are dissatisfied with Obama's performance and complain about his quickness to compromise with Republicans.
As the Republican Party begins to pick itself apart for the nomination, Obama will have to hope that it does most of his fighting for him, so that he might still use the "at-least-I'm-not-one-of-those-guys" strategy.
Otherwise, the Democrats are going to have to hope for a big "Recovery Winter."
