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By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter
M.D. Kittle
Hungry for a little political irony?
There’s certainly no shortage to feast on in the kind of weird and wonderful election year that only the late great Hunter S. Thompson could dream up — high on ether, of course.
Here’s today’s daily serving.
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was in Ohio this week, according to Barrett’s Facebook page, campaigning for President Barack Obama on the catchy “Romney Economic: Middle Class Under The Bus Tour.”
In a Facebook photo, the mayor is stumping in front of a bus — against presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney and for Obama, of course.
“In Ohio campaigning for Obama and speaking out against the Romney-Ryan plan that throws the middle class under the bus,” the mayor wrote on Monday.
I’d like to assume the mayor was not on the clock, when he was a few states away campaigning for the president. He was out of the office Friday, a staff member told me, and his scheduler did not return a phone call.
It’s good to see the mayor working so hard for the president. Obviously, he’s returning the favor for all the hard campaigning Obama did on his behalf during the gubernatorial recall elections this spring.
On the night before the June 5 election, with Barrett trailing in the polls, Obama sent out this heartfelt show of solidarity for the Milwaukee mayor.
“’It’s Election Day in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I’m standing by Tom Barrett. He’d make an outstanding governor. -bo,’” Obama tweeted.
As noted in a Wisconsin Reporter story this week, Obama was standing by Barrett from afar.
A lot of Democrats were publicly and privately PO’d that the president skipped Wisconsin in the recall campaign, a fight they saw as closely aligned with Obama’s re-election bid.
Unlike Barrett, Obama didn’t have that far to travel to help out an old friend. He was in the neighborhood, really, the weekend before the recall election.
The president appeared at campaign stops and fundraisers in Minneapolis and Chicago the Friday before the recall election, staying at his Chicago home before flying back to Washington, D.C.
Obama later told WBAY Green Bay, a CBS affiliate, that he was busy and has “a lot of responsibilities” and “would have loved to see a different result,” in the recall election.
Kind of sounds to me like Obama threw Tom under the bus.
But politics has a funny way of quickly healing the walking wounded.
Contact M.D. Kittle at mkittle@wisconsinreporter.com.
