Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in others’ suffering, is a nasty emotion, one I take no pride in confessing as I watch Democrats attempting to dodge responsibility for foisting Barack Obama upon us.  Nevertheless, it is certainly satisfying to see Dems scurry away from Obama as he visits their states. Adam Edelman in the New York Daily News:

President Obama spent Labor Day in Wisconsin, opening the campaign season in a battleground state with a tight race for governor — but the Democrat at the top of the ticket there was nowhere to be seen.

Mary Burke, who is battling to unseat Republican Gov. Scott Walker, decided to steer clear of Obama’s visit to LaborFest, an annual salute to organized labor held in Milwaukee.

She became the latest in a parade of Democrats in tight races who have tried to create space between themselves and a President with weak poll numbers.

Some of the others:

Last week, Obama visited North Carolina, where incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is fighting a tight reelection race. She met Obama on the tarmac when his plane landed, but, just hours before, had attacked his handling of the scandals at the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year.

And in July, Obama travelled to Colorado to speak at a fundraiser for Democratic Sen. Mark Udall — also in a close race for reelection.

But Udall backed out at the last minute, deciding instead to stay in Washington, D.C. and miss his own campaign event.

Other Democrats have been less subtle — Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s campaign began airing TV ads in April calling Obama’s policies, particular when it comes to energy, “simply wrong.”

Dems are hitting the panic button, if some of their campaign mailers are to be believed. Philip Swarts in the Washington Times:

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee would like you to donate. Right now.

The campaign organization, hoping to lead Democrats to control of the House come November, has spent the past week sending out a series of strongly-worded, seemingly desperate, fundraising e-mails trying to get supporters to donate.

“All hope is lost,” reads the subject of one such e-mail.

“We’re in serious trouble,” it continues. “Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers are massively outspending us…If we get blown out right now, we might as well give up hope until 2016.”

Another e-mail says Democratic campaigners weren’t ready for Republican attack ads.

“We are ashamed,” the letter reads. “We should have been ready for [Karl] Rove’s Obama-bashing ad blitz. But we didn’t see it coming.”

An iteration sent Friday said, “Debbie Wasserman Schultz pleaded. And bless his heart, James Carville begged. We wouldn’t all be emailing you today if it wasn’t so important.”

In black churches and on black talk radio, African-American civic leaders have begun invoking the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, along with conservative calls to impeach Mr. Obama, as they urge black voters to channel their anger by voting Democratic in the midterm elections, in which minority turnout is typically lower.

But as fate would have it, 8 of the 13 seriously contested Senate seats are in states with relatively few black voters, as Michael Barone explains:

It's apparent that even the most vigorous black turnout effort in the eight states with low black percentages is not going to make much difference. Democrats there must hope that their candidates can maintain levels of support from whites at or above the levels achieved by Obama in 2008 and 2012. In addition, Democrats in Colorado must hope they can maintain something like the 75 to 23 percent margin Obama won among Hispanics there in 2012 according to the exit poll. (Note: I have been skeptical, just based on instinct and observation of county vote totals, about the Colorado exit poll, which I suspect understates Obama support among whites and overstates it among Hispanics.)

Barone provides this summary chart:

As M. Joseph Sheppard writes today elsewhere on these pages, a massive repudiation at the polls in November could even lead to some defections of sitting Democrat senators to the GOP, bringing the Senate delegation as high as 58, almost within sight of overriding presidential vetoes.

Now is certainly not the time for overconfidence, but rather to energize efforts to achieve what can be done. Then will come the more important and more difficult task of undoing some of the damage caused by the most feckless president in modern history.