by Jack Landsman, Sun Oct 31, 2010 at 09:40:43 PM EDT
Nevermind the “shock” polls. Wait until W. is respectfully campaigning in safe, or relatively safe, districts in 2012. There’s your coup de grâce.
Barry, you’re doing a heckuva job. Dude.
(h/t: dcwildcat97)
Tags: George W. Bush, Barack Obama, world series (all tags)
....could be the GOP nominee in 2012. He'll bring enough of the Tea Party along to keep Palin out of the GOP nomination.
Never mind his numerous ethical lapses and scandals. Never mind Texas' $25 billion budget deficit. The "hair" wins.
No. It's Sarahcuda. President Obama's re-election is probably assured if the GOP establishment exercises some sort of nuclear option to stop her. Otherwise her election will complete what the country has unwittingly invited: a right-wing catharsis. I can envisage yet another failed presidency to follow Obama's, but the voting public isn’t going to buddy up to that until the gubernatorial elections in November 2013. Our task is to recruit a Democrat to beat Obama and pivot hard against both the Democratic establishment and Sarah Palin.
Here's an idea. Instead of destroying the Progressive President we currently have in place with the hopes that the country suddenly warms up to Howard Dean or the ever-phoney John Edwards which leads ultimately to a failed GOP Presidency from 2012 to 2016 and then a (I just know it!) more Progressive President beginning six years from now. Why don't we just try to support Obama and push for Progressive Legislation where we can? I mean, I know it sounds crazy, but there is a Democrat in the White House who has pushed Congress to do way more than most people believed was possible just eight months ago. And having the President's party lose control of the Congress while there is 9.5% unemployment is entirely predictable. I know, I know. Pie in the sky and all that. I mean, your plan has a certain appeal. The whole "pretend we suck for two more years so that the GOP is lulled into electing Sarah Palin at which point we pull off our mask and declare that we in fact do not suck and are poised for another Democratic wave in 2014 or 2016" gig. I mean, it's so simple and likely and all. But I'm just sayin'.
I'm going with Howard Dean.....I can't stomach anymore years of Obama's nilhlistic Republican Lite. Consider that Obama may yet get his dose of the empowered GOP leadership who are now going to go for an impeachment against him. No matter that Pelosi passed on the chance to impeach Bush after the 2006 Democrat take over the House. I doubt that their will be any reciprocity on the part of the GOP and the first thing they do is hire Ken Starr to start an investigation of Obama's birth certificates and his Chicago business dealings naturally. No matter that Bush killed almost 1 million Iraq / Afghani civilians for their oil resources in his illegal war.
If Obama get impeached he has no reason to blame anyone but himself. 1. played the "nice game" with the GOP for 2 years to no avail. 2. hardly ever left the White House to campaign for good Democrat candidates in close elections. 3. lost much of goodwill from the hard work that had built up great Democratic momentum in many previous Red States and GOP local areas.
I'm pushing for someone to campaign for in the primaries of 2012. Obama can take a hike......
Obama has been the most consequential president we have had in a long time...Healthcare , Financial reform , Student loans , Iraq . You may not agree with everything , especially health care for me , I think it should have been smaller and much more targeted but it seems to me he has been somewhat of a success , but these are not ordinary times because of the state of the economy , I think he has tried his best and done s well as he could with the economy and the circumstances he inherited . I would give him a B- in performance , even though I still think it will be a 65 seats victory in the house for republicans and more likely a 50/50 split in the senate , with a total takeover still possible
Lori,
With all due respect.
If you are trying to make valid points you might want to skip the "healthcare reform" portion when presenting your case.
For over 15 years we've been in the business of collecting money from health insurance companies for services they authrorized, the services provided, and then the for-profit insurance companies welshed. That for small town, mom & pop, stand-alone, institutional (Part A) healthcare providers.
We turn down new clients.
We have a complete and thorough understading of the health insurance industry in law, regulation, and what is commonly paracticed. If you think what we got was "healthcare reform" then unfortunately you have been duped. Please stop holding that up as an example of effective governance - it reveals a level of ignorance that is embarassing.
You probably didn't read what I wrote properly on healthcare. I didn't say that all , infact we are making a similar point ,maybe not exactly ...Go back and read more carefully ,...
I have a working hypothesis that the people most disappointed with Obama currently were the same ones who emphatically insisted that the GOP was completely and utterly destroyed after the 2008 elections. That always seemed bogus to me - just as proclamations of the Democrats' demise after the 2002 and 2004 elections. The road forward was always going to be slow, at times tedious, usually frustrating, and soaked through with compromise.
Obama could have pushed for Single Payer, gotten 124 votes in the House and 32 votes in the Senate or he could pass the best HCR bill he could. He could have spent the past two years villifying Dick Cheney as a war criminal while unemployment hovered around 10 % or he could have moved the Stimulus forward the best he could. He could have allowed the auto industry and financial industry to fail just to show 'em while taking on 33 % unemployment, or he could have done the responsible thing and kept us off the brink of the precipice.
I'm sorry, but John Edwards was always a fraud. Howard Dean is good people, but not particuarly popular. Hillary Clinton would have been a great President, but suffered from having the same last name as another former President. Russ Feingold can't even win Wisconsin this year. Paul Wellstone is dead. And no one is going to elect Al Sharpton to President.
Mr Obama-ego started early, like the next day after his election to walk away from the promises and the Democratic teams/volunteers who worked hard to elect him He may win nomination in 2012 but I'm one who IS NOT going to be poll watching/putting out campaign signs/and running phone banks for HIM.
The reason is simple: In 2006 and 2008 we worked our butts off to build up the Democratic party here. It was for many years a Republican stronghold i.e. judges, county officials, county attorney, prosecutors --- all were GOP. By 2008 we had pushed the local GOP to bankruptcy without any help from Obama. Did we get any recognition / any grassroots money / any organizational help? HELL NO. We wanted to go to Georgia in Dec. 2008 to get out the vote for Martin in the Senate runoff against Saxby Chambliss--you remember him the scumbag GOP senator who came in with the lies in 2002 that Max Cleland got his Vietnam wounds actually playing with a hand grenade--yeah him. Anyway--did Obama lift a finger or make a trip to Georgia--same story in Minnesota or in Massachusetts--not a Obama team member came to help.
Now its Obama's turn to be in trouble. Don't think I'm going to be helping him out. Wonder what his ego will feel when Boehner and McConnell decide to send Ken Starr in to impeach him.....wow, maybe he can smooth talk them into being nice. I hope so or else he is going to sink like a stone. The Democrats here don't need him. He has done us a ton of NO Favors now for 4 years. Let him face the music.
Obama is the one with the ego, correct?
Obama will find his Holy Grail isn't going to be "working across the isle with the GOP". They are out to get him and unlike 1995 when they tried it on Clinton, the United States has way to many problems (you outlined them nicely) for Obama to start tearing up the social safety net to please them as he has done many times over the last 20 months. Its one thing take action to help the country, its another to sage your ego. Just Thirteen days after Kennedy was killed, LBJ stood before Congress and told them to pass the first of several Civil Rights bills. Not for his sake (it cost him dearly in the South) but because it was the right thing to do.
So anyone who isn't LBJ just isn't worth fighting for? Don't forget the role he played in perpetuating the Vietnam War.
Also, most of the Progressive environmental legislation passed by the Senate in the late 1960s and early 1970s happened despite LBJ's machinations to keep it from happening. In those days, the Chairman of the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee was a Democrat named Robert Kerr. That is, the Kerr of Kerr-McGee fame. The folks who brought you Napalm and a host of questionable environmental and social business practices. When a particularly liberal or unruly Senator would get elected, LBJ would stick them on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee because he knew Robert Kerr could keep them in line. But then Robert Kerr fell unexpectedly ill in the early 1960s and the Chairmanship went to Edmund Muskie. So the Committee was basically over-run with these liberal, activist Senators formerly held in check as designed by LBJ and Robert Kerr. The next decade saw the passage of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act among others.
I'm imagining if liberal blogs were around in those days, they would have endlessly pilloried LBJ for his relationship with Robert Kerr. And, indeed, the Democrats' acceptance of a person like Robert Kerr in the first place.
None of this stuff is linear or as neatly outlined as it is sometimes remembered. We can all focus on the Public Option, or the BP oil spill, or the build-up of troops in Afghanistan. But the Democrats, with Obama as President, have accomplished a great deal. Probably more than has been accomplished by the Democrats for a generation. If you can't see that, maybe you need to change the channel.
I'm betting on Jebby. The Bush's love and have to have the power of the Presidency. Unlike a lot of rich people money is not their total end game--its power That is why we are seeing a dustup between Palin and the Bush Servant Man Karl Rove. Rove has to try to get rid of her as force before the primaries of Spring 2012 By that time Rove's well oiled and financed (probably $500 million in oil company contributions by 2012) will have cleaned up George W. Bush's reputation to squeeky clean. As seen in the big reception that the Bushes got at the World Series in Dallas over the weekend, the Bush cleanup is really going well. Pretty soon you won't be able to Google for Iraq War Civilians Killed and get any hits. Rove is doing his thing to put Jebby in the White House in 2013. As far as Ms. Palin's threat goes--she will have one of the following options:
1. Be bought off by a huge contribution of oil money making her filthy rich to drop out.
2. Rove will circulate a story on her in all the primary states that she likes to hump black sailors
3. She best travel by train or commercial airlines from now own. It would be unfortunate for her to fly in a small airplane--we all know how those things tend to crash into mountains all the time (keeping in mind that Bush Sr was head of the CIA for several years).
'
Like the Kennedys, the Bushes will be back. But 2012 is too soon, bro. This kind of establishmentarian treachery rests, I think, on the flawed presumption that Gov. Palin can't possibly beat the rather cool fellow who's been exposed to the world as a mediocre bungler. Their maneuvering, however, is shortsighted. It's one thing to beat Sarahcuda fair and square. In this scenario, she is Hillary. Although I'm not even sure Sarah still wouldn't bolt or somehow balk at party unity. Mr. Gross' recent Vanity Fair hatchet job may have been overzealous and sloppy in its specific examples, but I suspect he perfectly captured the egomania and the petty, vindictive character of Sarah Palin. (In the interest of fairness, 95% of politicians of her caliber are probably like that.) If the GOP establishment insists on carving her up, like the Bush people carved up John McCain in South Carolina 2000, they can kiss the 2012 election goodbye anyway. For all the certain talk of how black voters would abstain from voting should President Obama be denied renomination, that's nothing compared to the aggrieved, untrammeled fury of the Tea Party set.
If they know what's best, the Cocktail Party would run a respectable, clean campaign against Sarah Palin. If that fails--and it will--their best bet is to "shut up" (says Mike Steele; he and Palin are thick as thieves now) and rally behind her like they rallied behind Sharron Angle in that high stakes contest. McCain foisted this messianic political thoroughbred on the Republican Party and there's almost nothing the wise men can do about it. It's her time.
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myDD - skin
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