'If the Governor Loses, It’s Really Bad for the President'

Considering Barack Obama is already zero for one in his Massachusetts endorsements this year, if he can't drag Deval Patrick over the finish line this fall he may want to seriously reconsider his policies, especially since it appears likely he'll be facing a GOP Congress, if not Senate, come January.

A worried White House is poised to pull out all the stops in Gov. Deval Patrick’s heated gubernatorial bid - viewed as an early litmus test of whether disenchanted voters are ready to give President Obama’s message of hope and change four more years - or the heave-ho.

A Vineyard-bound Obama and his team already are discussing fall fund-raising appearances with Patrick’s camp and churning out campaign ads while David Axlerod - campaign guru for both Patrick and Obama - chats with Patrick “fairly regularly,” said one source close to the Obama administration.

“If the governor loses, it’s really bad for the president,” a Democratic insider close to the White House said yesterday, pointing out Obama already lost a seemingly sure U.S. Senate seat to Republican upstart Scott Brown.

Another Obama source said the race is “being looked upon as a petri dish to see how things will go for us.”

Obama and Patrick have been practically joined at the hip throughout their political careers. They’ve been friends for more than two decades and share a similar background as well as a campaign staff - Axelrod helmed Deval’s 2006 gubernatorial bid and Obama’s White House run two years later. Obama’s slogan, “Yes We Can,” was a slight turn on Patrick’s “Together We Can.”

“They essentially had the same message based on hope. They both won and then watched their early approval ratings go south. Patrick seems to be recovering but he’s still in danger,” said Andrew Smith, political professor at the University of New Hampshire. “If Patrick loses here, the Obama people are really going to be nervous.”

Of course if Patrick loses the media will tell us all politics is local, and if the Democrat Patrick wins in overwhelmingly Democrat Massachusetts we'll be told how popular Obama is.

Heads Obama wins, tails Patrick loses.