Obama to Cleveland: Are you over LeBron James yet?

As he slides into re-election mode, President Obama has been granting a series of local television interviews in key states such as Ohio. But the president Monday didn’t do himself any favors while talking to a Cleveland TV reporter, specifically bringing up the one man, in local terms, Who Shall Not Be Named.

That’s LeBron James, who departed the hometown Cleveland Cavaliers last year for the Miami Heat. Now James is on the verge of an NBA title, a result that the lion’s share of Clevelanders view as something on the order of the apocalypse. (And if the world is going to be torn asunder by fire, they wonder, could that just go ahead and happen before LeBron gets a ring?)

Speaking to WEWS, the ABC News affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, Obama, apparently unsolicited, asked whether the city, basically, had gotten over it.

“Yeah, we’re working on that,” replied the reporter, Leon Bibb.

Obama has done this before. Last year, when James was a free agent and mulling offers from several teams besides Cleveland and Miami, the president said he’d like to see him sign with his Chicago Bulls. Instead, James, in a widely derided ESPN special, decided to take his “talents to South Beach.”

The decision--and the way it was handled--enraged James’ former town, and James’ run toward a championship, something that eluded him in Cleveland, hasn’t helped matters.

Obama won Ohio in 2008, and Cleveland has always been Democratic territory. But the president had best keep in mind that this recession-tossed state put a Republican in the Senate and in the governor’s office last year. If he wants to win the state again, he’s going to need those Cavalier fans.

Obama went so far as to pick Miami over Dallas in the finals. An easy pick politically on one level; he likely won’t win Texas. But is he attempting to win Florida at Ohio’s expense?

Still, the president was able to get his message about the recovery of the auto industry across to his target audience. Watch the interview below: