ChiTrib: Hope and Change are over

Parachute Cutie sends a link to the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Chapman who calls for Obama to withdraw from the presidential campaign before it begins;

The vultures are starting to circle. Former White House spokesman Bill Burton said that unless Obama can rally the Democratic base, which is disillusioned with him, “it’s going to be impossible for the president to win.” Democratic consultant James Carville had one word of advice for Obama: “Panic.”

But there is good news for the president. I checked the Constitution, and he is under no compulsion to run for re-election. He can scrap the campaign, bag the fundraising calls and never watch another Republican debate as long as he’s willing to vacate the premises by Jan. 20, 2013.

That might be the sensible thing to do. It’s hard for a president to win a second term when unemployment is painfully high. If the economy were in full rebound mode, Obama might win anyway. But it isn’t, and it may fall into a second recession — in which case voters will decide his middle name is Hoover, not Hussein. Why not leave of his own volition instead of waiting to get the ax?

Of course it is indeed the sensible thing to do, but no one has every accused Democrats of being sensible. Sure Lyndon Johnson stepped back from his re-election, but only because his own party walked away from him on the Vietnam War that Johnson started by possibly trumping up the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or at least magnifying the circumstances which was used as justification for injecting combat troops into the country.

Nothing Obama has done rises to that level of manipulation of public opinion, short of his 2008 campaign promises of “Hope and Change” which never arrived. Of course, the jury is still out on “Fast and Furious”, Solyndra, the Gulf Oil Spill, and LightSquared. His promise to his base to close Guantanamo has fallen short. He’s been unable to stop job losses and mortgage foreclosures like he told the gullible he would, but at least he’s got a scheduled abandonment of Iraq and Afghanistan to iran’s evil clutches. Then there’s his promised $900 billion in cuts to the Defense Department. That ought to hold his ignorant base together.

Personally, I’d rather see Obama stand for the 2012 reelection…he’s so self-absorbed, that he’d never admit that he resigned in disgrace. He needs to be taken down a notch with an election loss. Besides, who knows what we’d get in his stead.

Probably someone who would tell the Democrats that he/she is the real deal Democrat who could get their agenda through Congress and that Obama was just a tool of K Street. You know, like they always say about the Soviets and China not being real Communists and that’s the reason that communism failed there.

Naw, let Obama take his licks from public opinion at the ballot box, and let the voters tell him what they think.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden