And Then It Was Time To Talk About Obama Getting a Primary Opponent
We're just a few months (or mere weeks) away from members of the minority party officially unofficially jumping into the presidential race. And the sitting president just did something that was unpopular with his own party. This can only mean one thing: It's time to talk about the president getting a challenger for his party's next nomination! Did you know that there has been "a debate that has been bubbling up on liberal blogs and e-mail lists in recent weeks"? Sounds delicious. Helpfully, some magazine rabbi guy raised this issue in the Washington Post opinion section on Saturday, and gave us some suggested candidates: "John Conyers." "Susan Sarandon." Sure, whatever. This Obama fellow is definitely going down, based on all this bubbling e-mail list chatter and half-baked rabbi op-eds. That's basically your America right there.
Is it possible to overstate how angry liberals are about this tax-cut situation? Was that really the issue they cared about? Matt Bai doesn't think so. Matt Bai think this primary challenge is definitely happening, because of that rabbi op-ed and a couple of the million people who have Huffington Post blogs saying the same thing, albeit without suggesting John Conyers . And that is an old journalistic axiom: Two dumb Huffington Posts and one inane Washington Post make a trend.
Let's just quote a line from each to see if these pieces are dumb:
In 1960, the hipster John F. Kennedy
There is also the likelihood in 2012 of a centrist independent candidate, perhaps Michael Berlusconi -- oops, I mean Bloomberg
Some of us, like Allard Lowenstein, Sarah Kovner, Harold Ickes, Eleanor French, Blair Clark, decided that Johnson's pro Vietnam policy had to be publicly challenged.
We need a progressive push for a new New Deal, which in the 21st century could be the Caring Society: "Caring for Each Other and the Earth."
So if you are playing at home, the answers are: dumb, dumb, dumb, and dumb, respectively.
There really is nobody from the left that would run against this man, unless Obama turned into something approximating Joe Lieberman on a severe sigh bender. We hope a primary challenge happens, and we hope the media at least takes it semi-seriously, though, because it would probably be pretty funny and sad.
Oh wait: Elizabeth Edwards passed away yesterday. So John Edwards will jump in this race, because he cares so much about her cancer. DUH. Will he win Iowa again, with the charm of his awfulness? [ NYT / Huffington Post / WP ]
I too am confused by the whole rabbi / rabbit thing.
I'll say what I said yesterday: At least he didn't sign a free-trade agreement with Mexico, gut welfare, and deregulate the telecommunications and financial industries so there'd be huge busts in both years down the road.
And I'm going to add that even after doing those things, Clinton was still x10 better than any Republican president for the last half-century.
As far as the political sense of doing this tax-cut extension, like the health care bill, the polling is hardly consistent on this: <a href="http://www.politifact.com/t..." target="_blank">" rel="nofollow noopener" title="http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statement...">http://www.politifact.com/t....