Dem strategists worry: How will the Libya war play next year during the campaign?

“I don’t see any upside, I don’t see him gaining him any voters,” said Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders, a Democratic consultant who specializes in reaching out to white voters in Appalachia. The risk will be minimized if the intervention “is over in a day or two… [or] a week or two,” he said. The voters he watches are “tired of body-bags coming back to the mountains… we don’t need another American war now,” he said.

“It is appalling that the White House has failed to explain why we are there, and how long we’re going to be there,” said Brad Crone, a Raleigh-based Democratic strategist in swing-state North Carolina. Another war “is the last thing the economy needs,” he said…

Saunders pointed to the Washington Post’s Monday issue, which featured a front-page picture of an exploding armored-artillery gun, and an inside-picture of the president playing soccer with a child in Brazil, during his long-planned five-day trip of South America. “When we are sending men and women into harm’s way, not knowing what’s happening, the president should have his hand on the throttle,” not his foot on a soccer ball, he said. The contrasting images of soldiers at war and the president at peace “will look bad to anyone outside the Beltway, Democratic, Republican or independent,” he said. “I think it is politically bizarre,” he said.