Only on Fox News and the pages of the Wall Street Journal are PUMA-inciters Douglas Schoen and Patrick Caddell considered “Democrats”. Nevertheless, Fox and the WSJ trot them out from time to time to show the world that there is disharmony in the ranks of liberals and Democrats. The fact is, however, despite their resumes, these two are no more Democrats than my cat Spooky (who is pretty Libertarian, just sayin’…)
The latest effluvient from these two is an editorial in the WSJ today saying that there is no way that President Barack Obama can govern when he wins in 2012 so the president should just step aside right now and let the real leader of the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton take center stage.
I’ll pause a moment to let you stop laughing.
When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president’s accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Need another moment, don’t you?
Now, these two idiots aren’t saying President Obama won’t WIN reelection. In fact, they come right and say he can win it. No, it’s just that they think he won’t get anything done because he can’t run on his record and so will have to run a negative campaign. And, after that, all the goodwill he has accumulated with the Republicans will !poof! disappear. You know all that goodwill from the Republicans, right? All that good, old-fashioned bipartisanship they’ve been engaging in since 2008?
Put aside the fact that these same two non-Democrats wrote essentially the same damn editorial in 2010. In that piece of political drivel, they said President Obama should agree not to run for a second term. The only thing different now is that they have chosen an heir-apparent to take his place.
Now, let’s take a look at their argument, just for a second. And, even before that, let’s look at the writers of this comical bit of absurdity.
Douglas Schoen is partners with none other than Mark Penn, a chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s failed run for president. Keep in mind that she was considered a shoe-in for the nomination. It was hers to lose. And, under Penn and Schoen, lose it she did. Schoen’s Wikipedia entry says he’s a Democrat that “believes that lower taxes would be a successful Democratic strategy, opposed President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, warned the Democratic Party to reject the Occupy Wall Street protest, and recommended that President Obama not run for reelection in 2012.”
Seriously. And he still gets referred to as a Democrat.
Patrick Caddell appears regularly on Fox News and other Fox programs. Pretty much everything you need to know about his veracity is summed up in this profile from the Washington Monthly:
Caddell believes the key to winning contemporary elections is appealing to ‘alienated’ voters–that ever-growing group of mostly younger voters who are not easily identified as liberal or conservative and don’t trust government, politicians, or the parties. You can’t lure these voters with programs and stands on specific issues, so the theory goes. Rather, you must remain as uncommitted as they are. You lure them by attacking that which caused their alienation: the Establishment. Even if he were inclined to help his candidate address the nation’s substantive problems and articulate a coherent package of solutions, he’d have trouble. Caddell understands polling, public opinion, and campaigning, but his knowledge of and interest in government is scant.
These are the guys suggesting President Obama should not run for reelection. Persuasive credentials, eh?
So, back to their argument. They say he cannot run on his record because the economy sucks so he’ll have to run a negative campaign and, having done that, he won’t be able to govern. In their minds, the Republicans are just bystanders in the whole drama, bystanders whose actions are entirely dictated by their opponents, it appears.
One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be “guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it.” […]If President Obama were to withdraw, he would put great pressure on the Republicans to come to the table and negotiate—especially if the president singularly focused in the way we have suggested on the economy, job creation, and debt and deficit reduction. […]
Not only is Mrs. Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr. Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does. Given her strong public support, she has the ability to step above partisan politics, reach out to Republicans, change the dialogue, and break the gridlock in Washington.
I’m not sure what planet these two jokers have been living on since 2008 but the lack of bipartisanship is clearly not coming from the White House. In fact, even President Obama concedes that his repeated efforts at bipartisanship has earned him some criticism from some in his own party.
But the more hilarious part of this is the suggestion that Hillary Clinton would be the better able to govern because, dog gone it, Republicans like her! She’s post-partisan! She’s a dialogue-changer!
Let’s just flash back to spring/summer 2008, shall we? When the primary race came down to Obama vs. Clinton, who got nasty? Who ran the now-famous “3 A.M. Phonecall” ad suggesting that Barack Obama would be inept and disasterous on foreign policy? Who questioned Barack Obama’s credentials every step of the way and attacked the man rather than his policies?
The answer to all three questions is Hillary Clinton.
There are, frankly, few Democrats alive today more politically calculating, partisan and willing to do anything at any cost to win than Hillary and Bill Clinton. Any suggestion otherwise is a complete distortion of reality.
But, I want to remind you of one other thing. Republicans HATE Hillary Clinton. They have always hated her. From the time she was First Lady and on, they have hated her. They called her hideous names. They derided her efforts at reforming health care insurance as Hillarycare and showed it the same level of disdain and malevolence as they do President Obama’s successful effort. When Rush Limbaugh tried in vain to get Democrats to select Clinton in 2008, it was nothing more than them setting her up to be knocked down later — they saw her as the weaker candidate.
Nobody with two political brain cells to bang together would ever say that Republicans would lay down their swords and come to the negotiating table with Hillary Clinton. It’s pure comedy that anyone would take such a recommendation seriously.
Even if I didn’t like it, I understood the PUMA syndrome back in 2008. There were a LOT of people who worked very hard for a canididate they adored and, when she lost the nomination, a lot of bitterness flowed. That was almost four years ago. For anyone to be trotting out these pathetic and lame PUMA Platitudes NOW is mind boggling. I guess the only unsurprising part about it is that it took two DINOs to do it.
