The Washington Post reports:

As political gambles go, it’s a big and risky one: $50 million to test the proposition that the Democratic Party’s outreach to new voters that helped make Barack Obama president can work in an election where his name is not on the ballot.

Democrats’s performance in November will largely defend on the economy, news events currently unknown, and the quality of Republican candidates and campaigns. But should they limit their losses in the midterms, it won’t be because they were able to hang on to those new voters Obama attracted to the polls in 2008 and not only because he isn’t on the ballot.

Obama is no longer the fresh-faced charismatic agent of change that he was two years ago, when many Americans were desperate to say goodbye to the Bush era. Now he represents a Washington status quo at a time when people are deeply disatisfied with the general direction of the country. If Democrats pin their hopes on getting those same voters to turn out for an off-year election, they’ll be deeply disappointed.