It’s no surprise Bill White is pushing away Obama and getting cozy with Clinton. Last week Texas Gubernatorial candidate Bill White invited Former President Clinton, not Obama to for his endorsement to help rally support.
Obama’s approval ratings are down to 40% in Texas according to our latest poll. Democrats and Republicans alike in other states polled (including Obama’s home state) would rather hear from Clinton than Obama. Voters in Louisiana and Illinois have a more positive reaction to an endorsement from Clinton than the current president. My guess is that Texans feel the same.
Maybe Houston’s former Mayor was right on the money when he told Politico yesterday; "If the President wasn’t spending so much money, borrowing money, it would probably help. "
Bill White clearly has his hand on the pulse of his state—he has to draw line between his policies and Obama's to have a chance of winning this election. Currently he is neck and neck with his opponent and the incumbent Governor Rick Perry; 42:42 with 14% undecided.
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If Democrats are to have any future as a national party, they will have to criticize Obama and appeal to centrist voters. Not just this year, but for years to come.
If Democrats are serious about winning 2012, they'll need to run Hillary or Bayh (or someone centrist) and abandon Obama. Standing by Obama is like a captain going down with his sinking ship. Even the rats know well enough to flee as sinking ship.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/maps/View-the-Michael-Barones-2010-sinking-ship-map-84499227.html
I know it's been suggested before, and it's usually dismissed by the experts, but numbers like these suggest that it might be time to poll on potential 2012 primary challenges to Obama, at least for curiosity's sake.
It did happen to Carter and Johnson, and the factions in the Democratic Party today are actually very similar to what was going on during the 1968 Democratic primary.
I agree with Herb, but I would take it one further, which is they've already started abandoning the SS Obama.
Look at Hollywood in the wake of the oil spill...no celebs have come to the defense of Obama.
Herbie, you and the Tea Partiers are about as far from centrist as you can get. You're somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. Bill Clinton is a centrist. Joe Lieberman is a centrist. Ben Nelson is a centrist. Lincoln Chafee was a centrist. You, my friend, are not a centrist. Obama is much more a centrist than you.
"It did happen to Carter and Johnson, and the factions in the Democratic Party today are actually very similar to what was going on during the 1968 Democratic primary."
How so? 1968 was about Vietnam. What's a comparable issue of contention now? Democrats, both elected officials and voters, still love Obama, and his campaign organization and fundraising are unprecedented. There is about a 0% chance anyone runs against him in the primary.
Republicans advising Democrats to abandon Obama are about as believable as Democrats advising Republicans to adopt Tea Party candidates for their races. The only difference is, only the Republicans are so overwhelmed by their purity-crazed extremist fringe as to believe it.
Ex-Presidents become more popular the longer they are out of office. Even Nixon was rehabilitated. Ok, Jimmy Carter hasn't been, but he's a different story.
Current Presidents, on the other hand, rack up both negatives and positives. Democrats can't run too far away from Obama. For better or worse he sets the Democratic agenda. If you run away from him, who are your running to? The Republicans? They want a real Republican.
Do not discount Obama's star power in 2012. His ability as a President is debatable, but his ability as a candidate isn't. He sold America on him in 2008, not on his policies. He can do it again.
The Democrats may need to rethink their legislative strategy as they did in 1995, but it has to come from Obama.
No, Tea Party principles ARE THE MAINSTREAM FAITH OF AMERICA. The Tea Party principles are everything that America was founded upon and everything that America was always meant to be. Anyone who doesn't support Tea Party principles is living in the wrong country. America is Tea Party nation. If you don't like the Tea Party, then you don't fit in in America.
Tea Party principles are far more centrist than the foolish CLOWN in the White House. America will ALWAYS embrace Tea Party principles. America will ALWAYS reject lunatic leftists like Obama who expose themselves and their real agenda.
I can't wait until November. We'll have SO MUCH to gloat about.
The Tea Party is the center of America. If Democrats are too delusional to understand that now, they will pay dearly for their self-delusion.
Republicans now favorites to win the House.
http://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/#
Democrats' lot in the House didn't look this miserable in 1994. Democrats will face historic and catastrophic defeat. The only way to get back into the mainstream is to repudiate Obama and run back to the center. Democrats have to embrace the Tea Party or become a permanent minority.
"Ok, Jimmy Carter hasn't been, but he's a different story."
I'd say Carter is far more popular for the work he's done since leaving office than for what he did in the White House, and that he's the most popular ex-president other than Reagan since, I don't know, Eisenhower.
Other than that, I'm not sure what point you're making with the rest of your post, DBL.
Somehow, 'Americans will always embrace Tea Party principles' doesn't seem to resonate with actual Americans, who have an overwhelmingly negative impression of the Tea Party. This continuing denial isn't healthy, Love Bug. Have you been smoking a few too many of those herbies you name yourself after?
Dustin Ingalls:
"How so? 1968 was about Vietnam. What's a comparable issue of contention now?"
It's not necessarily the issues, but the same sort of factions at work.
In 1968, the unions and machine bosses sided with Johnson and then Humphrey. The anti-war activists and academics, who were more liberal than the other facts and saw themselves as the future of their party, sided with McCarthy. The Roman Catholics and racial minorities backed Kennedy. Lastly, there were the conservative white Dixiecrats, most of whom eventually ended up leaving the Democratic Party to back Wallace's independent campaign.
Nowdays, the same dynamics are at play, with a couple of twists. First, the unions and machine bosses are firmly behind Obama, as they were behind Johnson and Humphrey. Secondly, there are those who think Obama is not liberal enough and has not gone far enough in rejecting the foreign policy and wars of the Bush administration. Demographically, they're quite similar to the faction that backed McCarthy in 1968; their bloggers dream of a primary challenge from Howard Dean. Third, there is still a Catholic faction that is unhappy with Obama's attitude towards abortion. The whole issue of abortion in the new health care law both motivated and empowered this faction, but they still don't have a figurehead. Lastly, there are the Blue Dog Democrats that are having serious problems with the perceived leftward direction of their party. These, too, lack a unifying figurehead at the moment.
The only major differences this time around are that black Democrats are firmly on the side of the President rather than uniting with the Roman Catholic faction, and there is the "wild card" of Hillary Clinton, who is not associated with a particular faction but gets a lot of support from women.
"Democrats, both elected officials and voters, still love Obama, and his campaign organization and fundraising are unprecedented."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of this post (titled "How to Win an Election: Get Cozy with Clinton and Criticize Obama") to express the idea that Democrats don't love Obama nearly as much when they're running for office or reelection?
"There is about a 0% chance anyone runs against him in the primary."
This is the same thing everyone was saying about Johnson as late as March 1968, when it was still the conventional wisdom that McCarthy would be an also-ran and Johnson didn't have to worry about a serious primary challenge. By the end of the month, however, McCarthy was surging, Kennedy had entered the race, and Johnson had dropped out.
Why assume that history can't repeat itself?
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the whole point of this post (titled "How to Win an Election: Get Cozy with Clinton and Criticize Obama") to express the idea that Democrats don't love Obama nearly as much when they're running for office or reelection?"
No, it's that Clinton gets a more favorable response when he campaigns for candidates than does Obama in this particular climate, and that Democrats are not tying themselves to Obama because he's somewhat unpopular, not because the candidates or Democratic voters don't like Obama. They love him.
I really don't see these factions you're talking about as anything serious or prevalent. There are always disagreements on policy within the party; it's nothing new or any more drastic than in any other year. Democrats aren't a monolith. And most of the votes against health care and other bills came not because of policy disagreements but because of re-election concerns by those in conservative districts.
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