What good would come of just renominating this administration by acclamation?

[Ken Burch]

Obviously, an uncontested Obama renomination in the primaries would mean giving up on any fight for progressive gains in a second Obama term. Such gains would ONLY come if the president knew he had to fight for and EARN progressive votes this time.

Obviously, it would mean accepting that the political culture in this country would just keep sliding further and further to the right without question. If he's unchallenged, he'll take that as endorsement of everything Rahm did and of every sellout he made. And it will be impossible to argue that he shouldn't take it that way.

Obviously, it would mean giving up on the poor, working class people and everyone else left out in the cold by the political elite getting any hope for representation in the next four years, if not forever. If those groups are ignored now, they'll be even more ignored if the man simply gets a coronation at the next convention.

Is "The Court" really more important than all of that?

Face it, folks, the GOP is weak now, and any Democrat could beat them, including a Democrat who spoke up for the dispossessed and against militarism. So why should we just give up and settle for bland nothingness and further surrender(sorry, "bipartisanship"), which is what renominating the administration with no challenge at all means?

Why should we lower ourselves to that?

Why not renew our principles, unite the have-not majority, and use that progressive unity to win big? THere's a lot more votes in the streets than the suites.

[Ken Burch]

1. And, once again, before anybody starts the "President Palin" bullshit

I'm talking renomination, not re-election in the fall.

[Cronus Protagonist]

2. Hear hear!

Why should we sell out on the poor, the sick, the infirm, the elderly, the gays, women, youth, babies to these rich oligarchs? Why? So we have another term for Obama? Is it really that important?

As for the Supreme Court Justice arguments, as if we should keep Obama so we can have SCOTUS appointments.. doesn't hold water. Our new president will be able to appoint EVEN BETTER SCOTUS appointments... maybe even a leftie or two to balance the court out a little more, which is clearly too much to expect from Obama.

The only gain for keeping Obama is that we keep Obama. I dare to suggest the slogan for the next election be "WE CAN DO BETTER", and elect a populist in place of Obama.

[pnwmom]

3. Name the Dem who could do better in the election than Obama.

That's the bottom line. We don't need some pie-in-the-sky candidate without a chance of winning.

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. Hillary Clinton

There are several more.

[pnwmom]

6. I should have said -- a Dem willing to run. She isn't.

[Ken Burch]

14. She isn't and she couldn't be a progressive challenger if she was.

Her 2008 campaign proved that she can't fight for the powerless.

[razorman]

34. So she says. We'll see.

[JTFrog]

33. Now that's the biggest fucking joke I've heard in years. n/t

[tabasco]

38. LOL

nuff said

[notesdev]

5. That's not the issue, and it's telling that you name that as the issue

Doing better in the election is not a goal; it is a means to ends.

Ends which Obama has made perfectly clear he will not seek.

By re-nominating him you are effectively abdicating and abandoning actual Democratic policy.

I for one have no interest in the continued reign of the Bush regime, whether nominally headed by someone named "Obama" or not.

[pnwmom]

7. It's absolutely the issue. In 2000 Nader also tried to pretend

that handing the country over to the Rethugs for 8 years would be a good thing. He was wrong then and you're wrong now.

Half a loaf is still better than nothing.

[Ken Burch]

12. Nobody's talking about going third-party here.

Plus, it's been REPEATEDLY proven that 2000 wasn't Nader's fault, so give that one a rest already.

[Donnachaidh]

23. yeah, let's settle for crumbs rather than fight at all

The new policy of the centrist wing of the Democratic party.

Woo hoo! :puke:

[cali]

26. ever hear the phrase "choose your battles"?

Do you understand its meaning?

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Donnachaidh]

30. yes I DO dear -- you also have to have a commander that is fearless

THAT we *don't* have. And that is THE point of the whole discussion.

I love it when all the centrists start flapping their gums about *it could be worse* -- when it IS worse because our *candidate* would rather give up than fight. We were told we were voting for CHANGE -- not CAVE IN.

Of course, the only people Obama stands up to and ignores mightily is the poor and middle class. Evidently he's not afraid of them. He's treated them like a disposable diaper....:sarcasm:

[tekisui]

32. Please link to where Nader said repuke control would be a good thing.

[jaxx]

27. There isn't anyone.

People know that but continue to throw a faceless someone in as "the Democrat of all times".

[cali]

8. go ahead. try a contested primary. the result will be the same

whether there's a primary challenger or not. And no, any dem couldn't beat the pukes. that's just delusional. The GOP is weak? Well maybe but so are the dems. Face it, there is no strong challenger to Obama.

Waste of fucking time and energy.

[Ken Burch]

15. Settling for the status quo is a waste of time.

Without a primary challenge, Obama won't even try in a second term. He'll just tell us to shut up and settle for the crumbs we got the first two years. He won't even try to make the healthcare program non-meaningless(nothing progressive was left in it by the time it got to his desk, and we'd have lost nothing if it died in the Senate. You can't build on gains that are THAT small.)

And without a primary challenge, he'll assume he was right to diss us and leave us out in the cold.

[cali]

21. and there's little to make me think he'll try with a primary challnge

aside from the fact that it is highly unlikely that anyone substantive will challenge him.

[JTFrog]

35. Holy batshit crazy batman.

:crazy::crazy:

[Ken Burch]

44. Holy unjustified personal insult, Robin

:eyes:

[BzaDem]

9. What makes you think that there is even a 1% chance that we will get "progressive gains" during the

the time period of 2012-2016 (at least as you define them)?

After redistricting, (where Republicans unilaterally control district lines of nearly 200 seats, and where Democrats barely unilaterally control any), we won't have the House. We likely won't have the Senate. We certainly won't have 60 votes in the Senate.

So your strategy would almost certainly result in losing the Court for a generation -- but it would also certainly NOT result in any gain you think it will. It's a 100% pain, 0% gain situation (for a generation). If you deny this, then you are simply wrong as an empirical matter.

[Ken Burch]

13. You've given up and settled for the nothingness of Steve Earle's

"four more years of things not getting worse".

Holding the ground, or settling for not losing as much ground, can't be worth anything. Only gains are worth fighting for. Defensive battles in the short run can never lead to gains later.

Sorry, I'm not a defeatist and I won't check my soul at the door.

The status quo is NOT the best we can hope for. And the bad things you talk of would happen under a re-elected Obama facing a 'Pug congress anyway. The second Clinton term, a term where the right wasn't ever stopped on anything that mattered. proved that.

Victory comes from mobilizing the have-not majority, not from settling for a slightly less objectionable center-right elitist.

[BzaDem]

16. "The status quo is NOT the best we can hope for."

I don't think the status quo is necessarily the best we can hope for at any future time (though legislatively, it is quite 100% mathematically obvious that it is the best we can hope for until 2016, when the 2010 Republican Senators are up for re-election). Putting your head in the sand is not a strategy -- it is anti-fact and anti-reason. There is never any good reason to wall oneself off from facts and reality, even in the name of hope.

I don't think we will have a President more liberal than Obama at any point in the short or medium term, but we might very well have a more liberal Congress along with another President similar to Obama in the medium term (in which case we will see improvements to the status quo, potentially significant improvements).

"Defensive battles in the short run can never lead to gains later."

So the appointment of Kagan and Sotomayor (which were certainly defensive, in that they replaced liberals with liberals and couldn't move the court to the left) won't lead to gains later? Really? So if a Republican retires in the future, and we all of a sudden have a 5-4 majority on the court, that won't lead to gains later -- made possible solely because of Obama's appointment of 2 liberal justices that did little in the short term?

I don't think you understand. If Kennedy is replaced by a Republican appointee (cementing their hold on the Supreme Court for a GENERATION), it doesn't matter WHAT our Congressional majorities are. They will overrule any progressive law, even if we have 60 PROGRESSIVE Senators. No amount of hope can change that. They probably won't be as blatant as the pre-1937 court was, but they will find technicalities and make new law to ensure that it is impossible for a significant progressive policy to ever be enacted (or if enacted, workable). You are playing with fire.

[Ken Burch]

18. So, once again, it's the useless "Think of the Court" argument

That's the argument that got us to accept a "Democratic" president in the 1990's who expanded the death penalty, PUSHED for the repeal of Glass-Stegall(something that a Democratic president should have felt morally obligated to oppose with every fiber of his being) supported the imposition of harsher sentences for crack use than cocaine use(sentences that were only put in place because more blacks used crack while more whites used cocaine) and who cheerfully SIGNED poorbashing bills from a Republican Congress rather than force them to pass them over his veto. Even YOU would have to admit that, in hindsight, we gave up far too much in those years in the service of victory in name.

And by defensive battles, I'm talking about the arguments that it's enough to slightly reduce the cuts in social services and slightly reduce the number of layoffs.

[BzaDem]

25. It is indeed the "think of the court" argument. But do you have a SHRED of evidence that such an

argument is "useless?" You simply declare without any support that the argument is useless. Any argument that the "think of the court" argument is useless has to be backed up by actual evidence that the argument is useless.

I personally have backed up the fact that it is a useFUL argument. In particular, I have pointed out that even if we win every election for the next two decades, most progressive policy we passed would be struck down by the Roberts court should Kennedy be replaced by another Republican. You provide absolutely no refutation to this at all -- none.

[JTFrog]

47. Useless these days: Supreme Court Picks, Planned Parenthood, Lilly Ledbetter....

Gotta love the new DU.

[intaglio]

10. What good would come from President Trump? n/t

In less than 6 years, if re-elected, Obama will have left office - then try and get a seriously Democratic President in power.

If a Republican becomes President in 2012 what happens to all the good things that have happened? DOMA will be law; Don't ask, Don't Tell will remain law; the EPA will vanish entirely; Child labour laws will be gutted nationally - not just attempted in certain states; Education will be gutted; Separation of Church and State consigned to history. These are just what comes to mind in a very few minutes.

In an ideal world it should be possible to have a Primary challenger - but this is not an ideal world, there are Republicans in it.

[Ken Burch]

11. Why assume we HAVE to settle for Obama, on his terms, to get a Real Dem in '16?

Wisconsin is a game changer. The right doesn't have the advantage anymore. We don't have to settle for defensive battles and nothing else.

[BzaDem]

17. If a Republican wins in 2012, by '16 it will be too late. n/t

[Ken Burch]

20. If a Democrat who keeps giving in to the Right without a fight wins in '12

Victory in '16 will be impossible.

If Jimmy Carter(great man though he's become in retirement)had been re-elected in 1980, he'd have done almost exactly the same as Reagan did, and his doing so would have driven our vote down even FURTHER in 1984, since there would have been no reason at all anymore for anyone to think that electing a Democrat would have mattered after eight years of near-Reaganism.

We can only win by fighting for gains and by challenging the right on all fronts. We can't win by continually tacking towards them. Blurring the differences now can only make it impossible to motivate voters in '12. Nobody is willing to settle for "lesser evil" campaigns anymore. Nobody thinks such campaigns can really be worth fighting. A lesser evil is still an evil.

(btw, I was talking about the primaries, not the fall. It's not as though Obama is the ONLY Dem who could win in the fall anyway. Any Dem can win who actually lays out a clear set of principles and convictions and defends them. Obama only did well during the times in that campaign when he DID sound progressive. None of his tacks to the center ever gained him votes that fall. It's for damn sure that his right-wing Afghanistan position didn't elect him.)

[BzaDem]

22. "It's not as though Obama is the ONLY Dem who could win in the fall anyway"

It's not so much that Obama would be the only one who could win in 2012, if it were somehow an open seat race.

But Obama is the incumbent. Any successful unseating of him would cause us to EASILY lose in November, and potentially for multiple presidential elections in the future. Some parts of the Democratic coalition might leave for the long term, while others will certainly leave for the short term. And it honestly has very little to do with ideology, and much more with personality. Such a primary would make the worst moments in the 2008 primary look like a super duper love fest.

I personally would vote for any Democrat who won the nomination -- including one that defeated Obama in the primary. I would similarly work for any Democrat who won the nomination -- including one that defeated Obama in the primary. But after such a personal no-holds-barred battle that would be required to unseat him, I cannot say the same about other people with any degree of certainty. That is what happens in primary battles involving incumbents.

You claim that nobody is willing to settle for "lesser evil" campaigns anymore. I seriously doubt this is true now, it is certainly not true in the long term (Bush proved that), and in any event, the vast majority of liberal Democrats approve of Obama and don't see him as evil at all. But regardless of these facts, I would suspect that the number of votes the new nominee would lose from disgruntled Obama supporters would dwarf any potential votes Obama would lose from disgruntled Obama critics. I personally would not like to see the winner of the primary lose any votes from any Democrats (and believe it would be irrational and incredibly damaging for that to happen in either direction), but I am only one vote.

[cali]

24. that remains to be seen.

dems will likely loose the Senate next year. Why? Take a frickin' look at the numbers. The dems have, I believe, 23 seats to defend to the pukes' 13. Will dems make gains in the House? Perhaps, but not enough to take it back.

[tabasco]

39. There's this thing called reality.

Political reality.

You're out of touch with it.

[The Straight Story]

19. In other words - get Obama to promise more stuff that he won't deliver on, then re-elect him

:evilgrin:

[Recovered Repug]

29. And the name of this challenger is? nt.

[Vinca]

31. I think the Obama "team" needs to know the masses will not automatically fall in line.

I know I can't get too excited unless I hear a few pledges that might actually be kept. Things like ending wars (for real, not changing the title of the troops there) and a promise to work to get a public option - at the very least - in the health care reform. I know I will go to the polls and vote for Democrats just to keep the crazies at bay, but it would be great to feel an iota of enthusiasm.

[Ken Burch]

43. It wouldn't even have to be a a candidate

You could organize "Peace, Freedom and Equality" slates that were focused on going to the convention and pushing for a genuinely progressive platform and open debate on the issues. That would take the personality contest aspect out of it if people were concerned about that.

[sufrommich]

36. Who is this progressive who could primary Obama and

win a national election?

[newfie11]

37. What about Alan Grayson

He certainly has a way with words.

[JoePhilly]

40. Give him a call, he's probably home.

Although I suspect that he is not interested.

[JoePhilly]

41. The search for the Mythical Obama Primary Challanger continues ...

Tune in next week, as the Discovery channel continues its search for Sasquatch.

Joining us will be Sarah Palin who hope to be able to make Sasquatch chili.

[Motown_Johnny]

42. It saves money that would be spent on a wasteful primary challenge and

is a vote of confidence for the President.

A challenge would confuse voters who don't play close attention to politics. All they get out of it is that even his own people don't like him so how can he be any good? Then they vote for the other guy, since they are not really paying attention anyways.


The real problem with your premise is that a challenge could make any difference at all in an Obama second term, it wouldn't.

Mr. Obama has one more election to run and no more. Once that one is over he won't need to shape policies for a re-election bid. Using a primary attempt as some type of threat is meaningless. Once the 2012 election is over all he has left to worry about (for himself) is his legacy. Do you think he intends his legacy to be that he left the poor and working class out in the cold? I don't.

We need to be strong in 2012 to get those damnable Bush tax cuts to expire and to regain some seats in Congress.


Everything you seem to think is obvious I think is wrong, maybe you need to think about these things a bit instead of letting your first impression rule your entire thought process.


Your implication that "the court" is the only difference between having a Obama/Biden in the white house and having McCain/Palin in the white house is just insane. Maybe you should look more deeply into what has been accomplished in the last couple of years instead of just what has failed to be accomplished. The glass is more than half full.

If you need to be reminded of some of the things that have been done please watch this video from the Rachel Maddow Show. A laundry list of accomplishments starts about 3/4 of the way in.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#40774380






P.S. Yes, the Supreme Court is that important but even if it weren't there are plenty of other reasons to be a strong supporter in 2012.

[cliffordu]

45. Gosh, Ken, the posit in your first paragraph is kinda bogus....

But as with all such things, YMMV

[upi402]

46. He'll say anything and suckers will buy it. n/t