October 28, 2010 06:41 AM UTC

President Obama Dropping Names on The Daily Show

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• by: greality

After explaining to Jon Stewart that some Democrats had to take tough, important votes in the last two years to pass legislation, President Obama went on to list three representatives:

Tom Perriello of Virginia:

A tough race and an important name to drop, seeing as The Daily Show is filming in D.C. this week.

John Boccieri of Ohio:

A toss-up/leans R race in a place where the President isn’t all that popular

and

Betsy Markey of Colorado:

A race with a description eerily similar to that of John Boccieri

The Daily Show is about the only public place that I would think it is OK for the President to be so obviously aligned with any of these candidates. The Markey camp has done well to avoid any perception of ties to the President and considering the demographic, that strategy has certainly served her well. But the students at CSU and UNC are the voters most likely to watch the President on John Stewart and I think this will be a bit of a boon to Markey’s campaign. Younger voters in this district are more likely to connect to the President’s message, they voted for him overwhelmingly in 2008, and they like him just for coming on the Daily Show.

This race is tight enough that even a small boost from this name drop could do great things for Markey on election night.

Full quote from the President below the fold.

The fact is, there are a bunch of folks who, during the course of this year, took very tough votes that they knew were bad politics because they thought they were the right things to do.

[APPLAUSE]

There are a whole bunch of Democrats – guys like Tom Perriello in Virginia, or John Boccieri in Ohio, or Betsy Markey in Colorado – who are basically in Republican districts, you know. They won in the big surge we had in 2008, they knew that it was going to be a tough battle, that these are generally pretty conservative districts, and yet still went ahead and did what they thought was right. And my hope in this election is that people who vote on the basis of what they think is right, and have integrity, and aren’t just thinking bout the next election but are thinking about the next generation – that they are awarded.