“Nobody would go so far as to call it a comeback. But Bill Clinton’s appearances on the midterm election trail are starting to turn voters’ heads in a way that Barack Obama’s simply are not.

“Democratic operatives say that Mr Clinton, who went through in 1994 the kind of setback that pollsters say Mr Obama will face in less than three weeks, is more effective at presenting the election as a choice between starkly different alternatives rather than a referendum on what people think of the Obama administration…

“‘Bill Clinton is about as close to a secret weapon as the Democratic party has got,’ says Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. ‘He has this ability to fire up the Democratic base that almost nobody else can do right now.’ Mr Clinton’s intervention in Kentucky, where Jack Conway, the Democratic candidate, is locked in a tight race with Rand Paul, the Tea Party icon, is a good case in point…

“Acknowledging voter anger in a state where Mr Obama has 29 per cent rating, among the lowest in the country, Mr Clinton added: ‘I am old enough to know that if you make a decision when you are mad – and I am not just talking about politics here – there is about an 80 per cent chance you will make a mistake.'”

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“Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in an interview last month that Clinton ‘will go down in history as a better president’ than Obama. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a rising GOP star, told The New York Times he enjoys the ex-president and that when he was in power, ‘the nation benefited’ from his moderation — at least in the last six years. Ex-Clinton foe David Bossie, now the head of the Citizens United group behind the Supreme Court decision that tore apart campaign finance law, told The Daily Beast he was wrong to think Clinton was a ‘radical’ in the ’90s…

“Putting aside Monica Lewinsky for a moment, [Bonjean] said Clinton ‘was viewed much more as a pragmatic leader and one who tried to make bipartisan deals such as the welfare reform bill or balancing the budget.’

“‘He understood that even though he’s president, he needed Congress,’ Bonjean said. ‘Obama doesn’t think that way.'”

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Via the Blaze.