Obama Primary Challenge? "Watch Afghanistan."

[georgephillip]

" As Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg was leaving a (Christian Science) Monitor breakfast last week, he was asked about the possibility that President Obama might face a Democratic primary challenge in 2012.

"Mr. Greenberg's two-word answer: 'Watch Afghanistan.'

"As the Monitor notes, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of Democrats say US troops should not be in Afghanistan.

"Note that the same Quinnipiac poll found military families split on the war, 'with 49 percent backing the US role and 47 percent saying the troops should come home.'

"That suggests significant dissent among the troops, because if every GI Jane and Joe is telling Mom and Dad that the war makes sense and the prospects are good, you wouldn't expect half of military families to say that US troops shouldn't be there.

"Dissenting troops tend to produce dissenting veterans.

"Dissenting veterans tend to produce dissenting veteran candidates for office."

One and Done for Dumbo II?

Stan Greenberg

 

[georgephillip]

When I started this thread I was assuming any serious threat to Obama would have to come from within his own party.

Alexander Cockburn has just gone a long way to disabuse me of that notion:

"This champion of the left with sound appeal to the populist or libertarian right was felled on November 2, and he should rise again before his reputation fades.

"His name is Russ Feingold, currently a Democrat and the junior senator from Wisconsin.

"I urge him to decline any job proffered by the Obama administration and not to consider running as a challenger inside the Democratic Party.

"I urge him, not too long after he leaves the Senate, to raise – if only not to categorically reject -- the possibility of a presidential run as an independent; then, not too far into 2011, to embark on such a course.

"Why would he be running?

"Unlike Teddy Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1979, Feingold would have a swift answer.

"To fight against the Republicans and the White House in defense of the causes he has publicly supported across a lifetime.

"He has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"His was the single Senate vote against the Patriot Act; his was a consistent vote against the constitutional abuses of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

"He opposed NAFTA and the bank bailouts.

"He is for economic justice and full employment. He is the implacable foe of corporate control of the electoral process.

"The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in January was aimed in part at his landmark campaign finance reform bill."

Think George Soros might get behind an independent Russ Feingold campaign in 2012?

 

[loosecannon]

Feingold, Paul and Kuccinich are all good men. But I seriously doubt that they can run against the combined power of both parties and win.

Ask yourself one question, GP: Hillary Clinton was the shoe in favorite to win in 2008. Yet Barry the political nobody was given a prime speaking spot in the 04 dem convention and went on to sort of defeat Hillary in the primary.

Don't you get the feeling that our leaders are merely placekeepers for a shadow government that needs weak, dependent surrogates willing to act as front men for TPTB?

Even Ronald Reagan was a manufactured/Manchurian candidate. Obama's whole life reads like a manufactured/Manchurian candidate in training.

The Bush's on the other hand were the real deal, real ruling elites from within the bowls of the matrix. But even they needed a Reagan to pave their road to the WH.

Now look at the folks being foist into positions to run: Fred Thompson, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, and a bunch of weak placekeeper types on the GOP side, while the hardened veteran Hillary, refuses to "ever run again".

The same folks who manufacture successful boy bands and new cultural icons like Madonna and Britney Spears are manufacturing our celeb presidents. Candidates are made and marketed like toothpaste and desert toppings.

Our republic has been fully commodified. We no longer have representatives in DC, we just have actors who play that role on TV.

 

[georgephillip]

It's hard for me to argue with or improve on what you've just written.

I would only add that Obama might be a bigger threat to progressives than Reagan, the Clintons and Bushes and even Sarah and Huck combined.

Most of the Democrats I work around appear incapable of judging Obama by the content of his character or policies.

Instead it's the color of his skin, and I'm the racist for mentioning the possibility?

I'm beginning to think the US would be better off with almost anyone else in the White House.