Buyer’s remorse
You have to see it to believe it. Barack Obama, who was swept into office as the great liberal hope, now has liberals wanting to dump him.
In an editorial in the Boston Globe, writer Joe Battenfeld called on the Democrats to do just that. Dump Obama.
Will the Democrats dump Obama?
No, they won’t. But they wish they could.
Battenfeld is not the first one to call for the Democrats to dump Obama in favor of Hillary. If the Democrats were going to dump Obama, Hillary is not only the logical choice; she would be the only choice.
Hillary is the only Democrat with the name recognition, the support base and the only one who could pull together a national campaign organization to run against the sitting President of her own party.
The Clinton plan had been simple. She was going to run in 2008. The Presidency was hers and no one would stand in her way.
Except an unknown Illinois Senator named Barack Obama.
For Obama, the picture is bleak. No President since Roosevelt has won reelection with unemployment over 7%. Obama’s only prayer for getting unemployment below 8%, much less 7% would be a massive cooking of the books.
The polling data at Obama HQ has to be enough to make the most serious campaigner want to go on a fourteen-month drunk. Not only will Obama not pick up any new states this year, the GOP is now becoming very competitive in some solidly blue states and many of the swing states are going red.
And in the Clinton House, Bill and Hillary must be cursing their bad luck.
If John Edwards had won the race in 2008, Hillary would have already filed to run against him and the Edwards-Clinton debates would already be scheduled.
But the Clintons know that Hillary cannot run against Obama and there is one reason.
Race.
Bill Clinton called himself the “First Black President.” It came as a shock to him in 2008 that the black vote did not go to Hillary because of that. Some in the black community in fact pilloried Bill Clinton over Hillary’s campaign. He has not forgotten this.
There are several scenarios and they all play out badly for the Clintons. First, Hillary challenges Obama and beats him. The Clintons are remembered in the Democratic Party as the ones who defeated the First Black President. The next scenario is that Hillary wins, and then loses to a Republican. Not only did she defeat the First Black President, she also cost the Democrats the White House.
The other scenario is that Hillary challenges Obama, loses, but Obama loses in the general election. The Clintons still get the blame. As of today, there is no realistic scenario where the Democrat wins in 2012.
Bill Clinton, above all, values his legacy. He was the first Democratic President to win two terms in office since Franklin Roosevelt. He was the only one in the last half of the twentieth century.
If Hillary challenged Obama, it would split the Democratic Party in two. We would see a political civil war like this country has never seen. It would probably destroy the Democratic Party, as we know it today. Well, maybe there is something good that would come out of this.
The Clintons know this. The only way Hillary’s name will appear on a ballot for President this year will be if Obama quits.
Given the size of Obama’s ego, I would not count on it.
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