President Obama Tells Voters to 'Pretend' He Is on the Ballot, Which Is Also the Other Party's Entire Plan

DALLAS — President Obama opened his party's first-ever midterm convention by asking supporters to "pretend" he is on the November ballot, then clarified, to loud cheers, that he is on the ballot, a legal impossibility the crowd chose to enjoy rather than examine.

Speakers mentioned Obama by name 155 times by one count, a figure that would have been higher had he not spent part of the evening saying it himself. The convention was designed to place him at the center of races in which he is not a candidate, on the theory that his voters show up for him and for no one else, a theory his party's candidates have chosen to find flattering.

The opposition responded that they, too, intend to put Obama on every ballot, in every ad, in every district, which The Press notes makes this the rare election in which both parties are running the same man, against himself, with opposite hopes.

The Press's campaign desk observes that turning a midterm into a referendum on the White House is a 'cult of personality' when the other party's president does it and 'energizing the base' when yours does. Both descriptions are accurate. Neither is a strategy.

At press time the President had promised his supporters he would be on the ballot and promised his opponents they would regret it, and the ballot printers, who work from the statute rather than the speech, had printed neither.