Steve Chapman, a member of the Editorial Board of The Chicago Tribune, Why Obama should withdraw (h/t HeyTammyBruce):
When Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, his slogan was “Morning in America.” For Barack Obama, it’s more like midnight in a coal mine.
The sputtering economy is about to stall out, unemployment is high, his jobs program may not pass, foreclosures are rampant and the poor guy can’t even sneak a cigarette.
His approval rating is at its lowest level ever. His party just lost two House
elections — one in a district it had held for 88 consecutive years. He’s staked
his future on the jobs bill, which most Americans don’t think would work….But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is
under no compulsion to run for re-election.
It is, in fact, the only way he can win.
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Comments
Chapman is an outlier at the Chicago Tribune–he is more libertarian than anything else. He and John Kass are the only Tribune columnists worth reading.
The Intrade market says there is a 5.4% chance that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. Obama is given a 93.4% chance of being the nominee. There are people willing to bet that Obama will not be the nominee and that Clinton will be.
Didn’t realise there were that many racists at the Chicago Tribune, how dare they suggest to the Messaih of the United States that he not run again?
🙂
“I checked the Constitution”
LOL
“Not so fast, Barry,” is what we should say to the hurry-up play the President uses. “Not so fast,” is what the progressives, papers, pundits, professors should hear as they back away from their disaster. You own the President, you made him. Maybe you will ask for mercy instead of waiting for justice.
Apologize, confess, repent, atone and mean it, Editorial Board. Bask in the forgiveness and generosity Americans are famous for.
This is getting embarrassing. It really is the same old play book every time…”We have to pass it quick, no time for debate, no details,” etc.
There are lots of trial balloons in the air floating this idea.
Lefty Matt Stoller wrote about his idea of how to get Obama to not run for re-election at Salon a couple of weeks ago. According to him, his idea is modelled after how the Democrat Party handled Grover Cleveland. (Basically, they went full bore populist and ran William Jennings Bryon.)
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/09/04/favoritesonsanddaughters
Some other lefty, I can’t remember now where I read it, said a “committee” of the highest ranking Democrats in both the House and the Senate need to waltz into Obama’s office and tell him they’ve lost confidence in him and he needs to remove himself from consideration for re-election.
I think he’s way too full of himself and narcissistic to voluntarily agree not to run. Only if donors withhold financial support will he not run. And at least so far, he’s still able to raise alot of dough.
The possibility that Obama may take this advice is depressing. Rather than running against, and holding accountable, a candidate whose administration, policies, and programs have failed miserably at every conceivable level conservatives would find themselves opposing a new candidate complete with an entire fresh set of promises and unknowns. The coming campaign may be the best opportunity conservatives will ever have to make their case to a broad captive audience. A new candidate could be a serious diversion, leaving much unsaid, requiring campaign-driven compromises to fixes that must be made in the country, in order to win an election. Be careful what you wish for.
Certainly the market anticipates … so a 2012 pre-election economic rally could correspond to the pre-election market dive in 2008, when they were anticipating the Age of Obama. That often gets overlooked when Obamaites claim the market was already tanking before he was installed. Yeah, it tanked as Obama’s numbers rose in the polls … the writing was on the wall.
But the massive debts and draconian laws still have to be faced … and it may well be that the coming of sober men to government will be as likely to pop the unicorn bubble, as to inspire an economic miracle. Bubbles pop … it is inevitable.
But still, a “Tea Party spring” is just what the doctor ordered, even if facing our problems will be like sobering up and going cold turkey on kicking our mainlining heroin/stimulus habit. But that will upset our dealers and pimps that run DC, and their codependents and dependents … so lets not expect any unicorns to save U.S.
At best, there’s a “slow train coming”.
[…] Obama or Die. Where have we heard that before? Consider, this is not Fox News, this is not HotAir, this is not Michelle Malkin, this is not Free Re… It’s Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board who says it is time for Obama to […]
one thing to remember: if he bails before he gets too far into the campaign, afaik, he gets to keep his campaign funds before they are spent.
granted, he can’t spend them on just anything, but that might be enough to tide him over until he can land another professorship or write his triumphal presentdential memoirs.
Note that we still don’t know who’s running against him. Once a nominee is named, the press will go to work on him or her, and it will be a bitter battle all the way. Don’t forget, it looked like Bush II was finished off by the economy in the summer before the 2004 election, and after the Gulf War ended, everybody was saying that Bush I had a second term locked up. There’s still 14 months to go before the election, which is an eternity in politics. Plus I have to say things have been so bad for so long now, yet it is amazing the President still has numbers as good as he does. The old story in politics is that 40% of the electorate will vote for you even if you are the devil incarnate, and 40% will never vote for you, even if you are the Second Coming. Obama still has his 40% that are going to vote for him regardless of reality; all he needs is another 10%.
For Barack Obama, it’s more like midnight in a coal mine.
Raaaacist!
Obama is FAR too narcissistic, and far too dependent upon the adoration of sycophants to forego running in ’12. He’s one of the small handful of people that still believe he’s doing a great job: because he has The Vision for us, doncha’ know?
All I can say is: Run, Barry, Run!! For nothing is quite as delicious as the taste of an adversary’s shattered dreams. November ’12 cannot possibly get here fast enough. I hope that his loony, collectivist “Let’s Get the Rich Guys!” program garners the derision it deserves. Honestly, has he done ANYthing besides repackaging the same ideas over and over and over for the past 3 years?