Obama's Name Now Toxic In Mississippi For One Democrat

Travis Childers, the Democratic congressional candidate who has the chance to flip Mississippi's first congressional district from Republican to Democrat, is so concerned with Mississippi voters falsely believing that he's been endorsed by Barack Obama that he has decided to cut an ad calling that claim "an attack."

Republican Greg Davis links Rev. Jeremiah Wright through Obama to Childers using a silly but apparently time-tested guilt by association advertisement. Childers's new ad protests. . His family, he says in the spot, "has heard the lies and attacks linking me to politicians I don't know and have never even met." (The Davis ad also refers to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi as well as to Obama, but the context of the past few days makes it clear that it's Obama Childers is referring to.)

Here's the first look at his ad.

Note that Obama's name is not mentioned.

LAST SUMMER, Obama bragged about his ability to expand the map for Democrats, to turn red states blue. He said that "If we just got African-Americans in Mississippi to vote their percentage of the population, Mississippi is suddenly a Democratic state." As was pointed out at the time, the problem in Mississippi for Democrats isn't black voters not voting their proportions -- it's the white voters who don't vote for Democratic candidates. (Actually, blacks voted well above this threshold in the 2004 general election.) Is Barack Obama's name now political poison in Mississippi?