Andrea Mitchell Frets: Voters Might Punish Obama Over Afghanistan, Gas Prices Though He Has 'So Little Control'

February 27th, 2012 9:06 AM

It must be reassuring to President Obama to know that minions like Andrea Mitchell have his back.  

On Morning Joe today, "correspondent" Mitchell fretted that President Obama might be facing electoral challenges for rising gasoline prices and Afghanistan, despite the fact that these are "global events" over which Obama has "so little control."   So unfair.  I mean, Obama only being President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States and all. Video after the jump.



I'll be back with the transcript, but in the meantime watch Mitchell's touching expression of concern for the unfairness of holding Obama responsible . . . for his record.

Note: Dem Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois is the early frontrunner for the day's most inane comment.  Saying he "couldn't disagree with Andrea more" over her suggestion that rising gas prices might her the president at the polls, Durbin claimed that Obama was in the right place on the issue because he favored ending subsidies for oil companies.  Now, as conservatives, we might as a general matter oppose attempts to manipulate markets through subsidies.  But for Durbin to suggest that increasing costs for oil companies will somehow lower gas prices is . . . well, you fill in the blank.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Andrea, the Republican candidates are certainly blasting the President for apologizing for the Koran burnings. This is, there are, we've got a long slog ahead but it certainly seems like the president has got the upper hand right now.  

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well the President may take some confidence, and Senator Durbin, I'm sure the you Democrats in the Senate take a lot of confidence from the way that the Republican campaign has evolved into debates over contraception and whether college is a good goal for American kids.  But what about those events like Afghanistan, like gasoline prices, which are global events over which the President has no little control? Doesn't he have a lot of challenges going ahead, going forward as the Commander-in-Chief and as the incumbent?     

DICK DURBIN: On gasoline prices, couldn't disagree with Andrea more. At this point, I would say, I was back home all last week, gasoline prices dominated the conversation.  They went up twenty and thirty cents a gallon in one week, and people said, what's going on? But when the President talks about holding oil companies accountable, ending their federal subsidy, I think most people say, that is a reasonable position to take.