Could Obama be Land's final salvation?

Terri Lynn Land enters the final 2 1/2 weeks of her Senate run trying to fend off increasing criticism that her campaign has been a near-disaster. 
But now she is hoping that President Obama might be her salvation.
"Let me tell you how close this race is," the GOP nominee said during a Wednesday campaign appearance in Utica, "President Obama is coming here."


Obama is expected to campaign for seven Democratic gubernatorial candidates as the election approaches, including a campaign stop in Detroit at the end of the month to boost Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer.

But Land's Democratic opponent, Gary Peters, is the only Senate candidate in those seven states to step forward and agree to some campaign help from the unpopular president.
Peters has not exactly embraced Obama, saying he agrees with him on some issues and disagrees on others, but it appears that the Michigan Democratic Party believes that the president can shore up the party's base and generate some mid-term enthusiasm within the black community.

Nonetheless, it is a risky move that could backfire at a time when Peters has held a solid lead in numerous Michigan polls. And that's what has the Republicans hoping.
One longtime GOP activist from Warren received a roar of laughter and approval from the pro-Land crowd in Utica when he told the candidate: "President Obama coming here for Gary Peters -- he might put you over the top."

Meanwhile, eclectablog has a full rundown on all the media reports that are giving Land fits as the mid-terms approach. 
Land's refusal to appear before the Detroit Free Press editorial board until the newspaper apologizes for an Oct. 4 Brian Dickerson column is dissected by eclectablog, with Freep editorial page editor Stephen Henderson exclaiming: "You will never see us acquiesce to this sort of blackmailing ..."
The Dickerson column skewered Land for an incoherent interview she gave on Michigan Radio, and the writer suggested that Land might be best to crawl back into her bunker.
Land said on Wednesday that she was particularly upset with this line in the column: Land "... has been about as accessible up to this point in her campaign as a music video diva recovering from plastic surgery."

That's a pretty funny line.
Dickerson did not in any way claim that Land is ugly or disfigured. But the Land camp tried to squeeze that comment into her last-ditch effort to claim that Peters, the Democrats and certain factions in the media are attacking her based on her gender.
The desperation is fairly obvious if you read the entire column and realize that Dickerson had far more stinging criticism for the GOP nominee that did not fit the narrative that Peters and the Dems are "anti-Mom."
Such as this: "... the Republicans' fateful decision to nominate a woman who loses ground every time she opens her mouth, a candidate so inarticulate that even voters ideologically disposed to support her aren't sure what she's saying."

At the same time, ABC News ran a story about Land with this headline: "The Republican candidate that even Republicans love to hate."
Bill Ballenger, the dean of Michigan political pundits and a former GOP state senator, said that some aspects of the Land campaign have been "laughable." 
When the Republicans were stuck with a second-tier candidate like Land, Ballenger added, no one in the GOP thought that the former Michigan secretary of state would be "as inept and inarticulate as she’s proven to be.”

ABC also talked with former state party chairman Saul Anuzis, who bemoaned the lack of a GOP first-string player. 

"This is a seat we could have had,” Anuzis said. 

And then we have this from The Atlantic, which also wrote an unflattering piece about Land under the headline: "Did Republicans blow the Michigan Senate race?" The magazine offered a gem of a quote from the curmudgeonly Detroit writer Jack Lessenberry: 

“If you asked these candidates what time it was, Peters would give you a lecture on watchmaking. Land would stare at the wall for a while and then say, ‘Daytime?’”