Where Firebagging Is Going

Just as it's predictable that a GOP Congress would attack Obama from the right,  it's entirely predictable that the Royal Order Of Those Who Think Obama Is Just Not Progressive Enough will go after him from the other direction.  With Pennsylvania Dem Gov. Ed Rendell openly saying that a deteriorating situation inf Afghanistan may lead to an Obama primary challenge in 2012, it's important to put the Useful Idiocy in perspective.  Steve M:

I understand the disgruntlement. I just wonder if there's any chance whatsoever that a primary challenge will either get a more progressive person elected or push Obama leftward and then get him elected. I really can't imagine either of those things happening.

But there will be a clamor. And my guess (as I said a while back) is that Russ Feingold, integrity narcissist, is the guy who'll be urged to run. I could see him going for it (even though, yeah, I know, he may not even win his own race this year).

Whoever it is -- if not him, maybe the primary fans will rally around Howard Dean, or Dennis Kucinich -- I think Obama will win the nomination, possibly quite bloodied. And then I think Ralph Nader -- who you just know is going to run yet again -- is going to start looking surprisingly good to a lot of disgruntled lefties. But, hell, I think we could a Constitution Party candidate (especially if Romney gets the GOP nomination) and a Bayh/Bloomberg ticket and Lord knows what else, so this really could be a free-for-all.

I'd be more sympathetic to this course of action if I felt that a strong and durable sense of progressivism had started to spread in the heartland. But that hasn't happened -- every liberal can be demonized as a liberal, and even heartlanders who've been favorably disposed to that person will inevitably begin to flee when the anti-liberal propaganda gets cranked up. That's because, at best, we get heartlanders to vote Democratic, but we don't get them to understand and embrace liberalism (even though many of them have skepticism about the power structure that we could tap into). Even Obama has suffered because of the public's unwillingness to rally around liberal ideas. That's what we have to reverse.

In other words, 2012 is going to be a glorious disaster.   Personally you have to like Obama's chances to come out ahead against the likes of Evan F'ckin' Bayh, Moose Lady, Russ Feingold, Newtie, and Ralph Nader (The King Of All Useful Idiocy).  But yes, I certainly expect some sort of primary challenge and while Steve thinks it will be Feingold, I have to say that Hillary's name will be the one thrown around the most by the Village.

Still, Steve has two valid points:  Obama will not be pushed further to the left, and people have to believe in progressive ideas as the solution, not the problem.  30 years of "godless, commie liberals" is not going to be easy to undo.