Obama Hits The Trail
President Obama will be in campaign mode today, helping out two of his party's incumbent senators who are considered vulnerable in 2010, Hotline OnCall's Reid Wilson reports: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO). (Full disclosure: Bennet is the brother of Atlantic Editor James Bennet.) The trip to Colorado is marginally unusual, given that Bennet faces a primary challenge from former state House Speaker Andrew Romnoff, but Bennet has backed Obama up in the Senate (for instance, he is pushing for a vote on the public option even now after it has long been considered dead, as progressives try to revive it).
Obama will attend two events for Bennet, then he'll travel to Las Vegas for a DNC fundraiser in the home state of the electorally beleaguered Reid. It will mark Obama's first trip there since the president's latest perceived slight to Vegas, when he said the federal government should tighten its belt just as families don't "blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college."
Reid suggested Obama "lay off" Las Vegas after that comment. Perhaps shaking some Democratic hands in Reid's home state will make up for it.