President Obama has come in for huge amounts of criticism from Republicans for his fundraising activities in the months leading up to the midterm elections. He has appeared on the West Coast, the East Coast and points in between, usually in private events, pulling in millions of dollars for the Democratic Party.

Obama booked his odd travel itinerary because he hasn’t been welcome anywhere else.

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President Obama was finally allowed to openly campaign for a Democratic Senate candidate over the weekend, appearing at a rally in Detroit for Rep. Gary Peters, who is vying with Republican Terri Lynn Land for an open seat. But that hardly counts because Peters has the race wrapped up and there’s no way the president’s historically low approval ratings could hurt him in the final days of the campaign.

"Thank God, our president stood up for American workers," Peters told a boisterous crowd of mostly black Democrats Saturday night at Wayne State University.

That was about the nicest thing that a Democratic candidate has said about the president in the final days of the mid-term campaign, which polling data suggests will result in a GOP takeover of the Senate. Obama remains persona non grata in about ten other states where Democrats are fighting for their political lives and have distanced themselves from the president – often in embarrassing ways.

In Kentucky, Democratic Alison Lundergan Grimes has repeatedly refused to say whether she voted for Obama in 2012, while running TV ads to bluntly stress her differences with Obama on guns and coal in her bid to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

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Democratic Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu tells voters she will always put them first – even if that means bucking the president – and earlier this year she ran an ad saying, "The administration's policies are simply wrong when it comes to oil and gas production in this nation."

In Alaska, freshman Democratic Sen. Mark Begich has said that Obama is “not relevant” in this election, and has spoken of the need to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling – a move strongly opposed by the Obama administration.

Recently, freshman Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas said in a TV interview that Obama had become “a drag” on his campaign. Even Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC) reluctantly conceded that the government has been “late to the table” with its Ebola response and that “Certainly there are issues where” Obama has not shown strong leadership.

While voters have done little to hide their contempt and disgust with politicians of all political stripes this year, the president has come in for an unusually brutal assessment on his leadership on foreign and domestic issues.

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A record low 44 percent of Americans report a favorable impression of him in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week.

“President Obama's image is considerably weaker than during the past two election cycles, along of course with his job approval ratings,” The Post reported on Sunday. “Half the public now see Obama unfavorably, two points shy of his record high from last November amid the botched Healthcare.gov rollout.”

Yesterday’s six-point unfavorable-favorable margin matches the worst since Obama rose to the national stage, according to the Post analysis.

“You’re finding Democrats pretty dispirited at this point and trying to distance themselves from the president,” former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

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While there is no question that many Democrats with much riding on the outcome of Tuesday’s election have distanced themselves from the president and his policies, the tactic doesn’t appear to be working.

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