White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the 2014 elections were not a referendum on President Obama's policies but struggled to explain why so many Democratic candidates were distancing themselves from the president ahead of Tuesday's elections.
"It's not," Earnest told CNN correspondent Jim Acosta. "The voters who at least picked up the phone to talk to the people who were conducting the poll for CNN indicated that at least a majority of them were not trying to send a message to the president with their vote, that something else was driving their decision."
Acosta pointed out that the majority of Americans believe the country is moving in the wrong direction and that Republican candidates are overwhelmingly running against the President's policies, which Obama himself claimed were "on the ballot."
"I think what the important thing here is what's driving the voter's decisions," Earnest said. "Most voters are deciding who to vote for based on the name that's on the ballot, not the name that's not."
Earnest tried to address Obama's shying away from battleground states, asserting that Obama has supported Democratic candidates who share his views on policymaking.
"The president has worked so hard to benefit Democratic candidates in states all across the country," Earnest said. "It's been up to those individual candidates, those Democratic candidates, to make decisions for themselves about how best the president and his support can be used to their benefit in the elections."
Apparently Democratic candidates Alison Lundergan Grimes, Bruce Braley, Mark Udall, Mark Begich, and Michelle Nunn all felt that the best way to benefit from the president's support was to assert that Obama was not on the ballot.