OPINION:
Pressure is mounting on Barack Obama to throw in the cards and announce that he won’t seek re-election as president. Surprisingly, the push is coming from the left. This has many in mainstream America scratching their heads asking why liberals want to dump the most hard-left president in American history. The answer is they’re worried Mr. Obama has moved too far, too fast - and revealed too much of their big-government agenda - to win a second term. This is Hillary Clinton’s moment.
Perennial Green Party candidate Ralph Nader summed up the radicals’ grievance with the first black commander in chief. “Nothing’s worse than an incumbent president slipping in the polls, being constantly on the defensive, being accused by supporters of having no backbone and running an unenthusiastically received campaign,” explained Mr. Nader on Monday. “That’s a prescription for defeat.” He went on to list the Wall Street bailouts, “a unilateral war in Libya,” extending wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and losing the debt-ceiling debate to Republicans as more justification for dumping Mr. Obama.
The New York Times has led the charge against “The One.” Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Maureen Dowd has been delightfully harsh in her criticism not only of the Obama administration but of Mr. Obama personally. “Is Obama so isolated he can’t see that Americans are curled up in a ball, beaten down by a financial crisis, an identity crisis, a political crisis and a leadership crisis?” she asked in a recent column. “The White House team is flailing - reacting, regrouping, retrenching. It’s repugnant,” she complained in another. This president is in real trouble when he’s lost the support of the old Gray Lady (that lady being the New York Times, not Miss Dowd).
All the friendly fire is enough to make one feel sorry for Barry, almost. After taking big-government to record levels and successfully diminishing U.S. influence abroad, he would seem to be everything the “Blame America First” crowd would want. But as conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh reminded on his show earlier this week, “Obama has destroyed more jobs than any president in modern history.” Many Democrats understand this is a political liability in an election year when lots of unemployed blue-collar union workers that make up their base are desperate for change.
Panic is setting in that Mr. Obama will go down to defeat as a martyr for the cause and take the cause with him. It’s not that liberals disagree with Mr. Obama’s Keynesian spending spree, the crippling debt he’s stacked up or his countercultural social policies. They love it all, but that doesn’t matter if the populace revolts and puts elephants in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress. Then their revolution is dead. The left needs a candidate who is a true believer but willing to put on a moderate false face to hoodwink Middle America. It’s time for Hillary to make her move.
Brett M. Decker is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. He is coauthor of the forthcoming book “Bowing to Beijing” (Regnery, November 2011).
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