First lady Michelle Obama believes that Democrats running for Congress eagerly desire her presence on the campaign trail during the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections. However, she has avoided helping some Senate Democrats because she’s mad at them for failing to show adequate support for her deeply unpopular attempt to change people’s diets.
The Daily Caller is not making this up. The New York Times has reported it.
The first lady has expressed frustration with Senate Democrats because they didn’t do enough to fight Republican attempts to weaken the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” explains the Times. The 2010 law is a complex body of meal regulations implemented by the Department of Agriculture that has long been her signature issue.
Michelle Obama was also especially furious after nearly a dozen Democrats from states where potatoes are a commercial crop joined Republican lawmakers in opposing a decision by the Obama administration to ban white potatoes from the list of foods which recipients of Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program assistance can purchase with federal funds.
Obama aides and Democratic operatives downplayed the rift, saying the first lady has other reasons for laying low this election cycle. She wants to spend time with the first daughters, they say. She doesn’t like Washington politics.
An unnamed Democrat strategist also gently alluded to the possibility that Democratic candidates don’t really want the first lady around.
“She’s awesome, but it just brings in the name Obama,” one Democrat told the Times.
Thus far, the first lady is mostly appearing on behalf of Democratic gubernatorial candidates in states where Democrats are very plentiful. She has shown up in Massachusetts, for example, and Maine. She is also slated for a second appearance in Wisconsin on behalf of struggling Democrat Mary Burke.
Last month, she stumped for Michelle Nunn, a Georgia Democrat battling for an open Senate seat. However, the first lady has no plans to travel to other Southern states where Democrats are facing tough campaigns in Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina.
Recent polls have shown that Michelle Obama enjoys an approval rating approximately 20 percentage points higher than her husband’s dismal 38 percent approval rating. (RELATED: Obama’s Approval Rating Drops To All-Time Low … Again)
An eruption of aggravation about what American schoolchildren can eat in school cafeterias is never far away in the Obama era, however, and the healthy school lunches the first lady touts have not been popular. (RELATED: Kentucky Students To First Lady Michelle Obama: Your Food ‘Tastes Like Vomit’)
The school-lunch and school-snack law promoted by the first lady now prevents students in all 11 taxpayer-funded public schools in Elyria, Ohio from enjoying the famous Elyria pink cookie — a velvety, cake-like, scrumptious delicacy glazed with a huge dollop of sugary pink icing that Cleveland magazine dubbed the Elyria pink cookie the “Best Cafeteria Cookie” in 2009. (RELATED: Now Michelle Obama Has Caused America’s ‘Best Cafeteria Cookie’ To Be Outlawed)
As of July, new Smart Snacks standards created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for over 30 million American school kids stringently limit the number of calories and the amount of sugar, fat and sodium in every morsel of food sold at schools — including cupcakes for fundraising. (RELATED: Michelle Obama Policy Axes Cupcake Fundraiser For WWII Vets)
Michelle Obama’s exercise campaign also looks to be rapidly heading to the ash heap of history. Earlier this year, federal researchers announced research showing that 75 percent of American kids don’t do a bare minimum of exercise each day. (RELATED: Michelle Obama’s ‘Let’s Move’ campaign Fails Miserably)
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