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Andrea Mitchell: 'President Obama Was a Drag'

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell talks to Brian Williams about the president's effect on the midterm elections.
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Democrats may be wishing President Obama sat this one out. With Republicans taking control of the Senate and making gains in the House of Representatives, it seems that Obama's charisma cache may have run out, NBC's Andrea Mitchell pointed out to Brian Williams on Tuesday.

"First of all, what (Tuesday night's early results) tells us about this campaign, this election, is that President Obama was a drag," said Mitchell. "Look at Kentucky ... Two-thirds of the voters in Kentucky had a negative view, did not like President Obama. That was an enormous headwind for Alison Grimes. You wondered why she was refusing to say whether she voted for president Obama. That’s why!"

In exit polls on Tuesday, 44 percent of voters said they approve of Obama, but 54 percent disapprove. And despite 79 percent of voters saying they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, the president appeared to be the lighting rod at the polls.

"Even though, people don’t like Congress and Mitch McConnell the incumbent Republican leader — and potentially, if the Republicans take over, the next majority leader — even though 52 percent of the people in the exit poll said they didn’t like him and they don’t like Congress, he was able to overcome that because Obama was such a drag on Grimes," said Mitchell. "So Obama is a really negative factor. And this is also the case in Colorado and other places that we’re seeing."

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