That’s not at all how the Ford campaign team took it. They were very seriously concerned, and rightly so. Ford dumped Rockefeller and picked Dole as his running mate just to shore up his right flank. He also shook up his Cabinet in the “Halloween Massacre” of 1975, demoting moderates in anticipation of Reagan’s challenge.
Clinton is not going to run against Obama. Nobody’s going to mount a serious run, but we’ll assume a fringe candidate does. Clinton is a member of Obama’s administration, so even if everybody agrees the state department is being well run, she is hardly in a position to say his administration is failing. And she can’t really take sole credit for the things that have gone right since she answers to him. She’s already said she plans to serve out the term and then retire to a professorship or something like that.
HRC will not run against obama, because HRC would certainly lose.
There is no way HRC could win without the black vote, and HRC cant win the black vote in any election against obama. obama has 98% approval from black voters.
Furthermore, if somehow HRC stole the Democrat nomination away from obama, HRC would lose the general election because all the black voters would stay home and no Democrat can win the general election without black voters.
(HRC could run in 2012 only if obama dropped out, or HRC could run for vice-president to replace biden - that is all she can do)
Well, more precisely, there’s one powerbroker. But if he wanted to sit down for a chat with Obama, he’d need a mirror.
You really believe there’s anyone in the party who can tell him that? A sitting POTUS is always the acknowledged leader of his party; there are no “powerbrokers” with more power in the party, real or nominal. Just as there are no powerbrokers, not even the POTUS, who can tell an intrapartisan challenger – such as Reagan in 1976 or Kennedy in 1980 – not to run. Leaving aside local urban political machines and courthouse rings (which are largely things of the past anyway), the major American political parties have never been as tightly organized as that, not at the state level, certainly not at the national level.
There are people within the party who could sit a politician down and say “we need you not to run this year, and here’s why, and what we’ll offer you, and here’s what we’ll do if you don’t listen.” But that doesn’t work on the president, and it doesn’t always work on people below the president either. Joe Lieberman is another example. Some Democrats tried not to get him to run as an independent after he lost the Democratic primary in 2006. He ran anyway and he won. The politicians are the face of the party so they have a lot of power. The days of parties being controlled by guys in the proverbial smoky room ended 40 years ago.
What others have said. The decision on who would be the 2012 Democratic nominee was made in 2008. If Obama were to screw up so badly that the Democrats were considering dropping him, they’d already be writing off the election anyway.
Oh, there are other powerbrokers, all right – outside the party organizations and outside the government; their HQ, so far as they have one, is New York, not DC. Their power varies with circumstances and is not always decisive – in 2008 they were mainly behind Hillary for the Dem nomination, to judge by the amount of funding and backing she got so early on – but they always matter, even to a sitting POTUS. We really haven’t had one since FDR who really resolved to stand up to them, and Obama certainly is not that kind of POTUS.
Obama’s popularity polls don’t mean anything right now, and they won’t mean anything until a Republican front-runner emerges. In American politics the question is never whether the voters think you can do better, because they always do. The question is whether the voters think you can do better than the other guy, and there are plenty of aspiring Republican candidates that Obama could win against very easily.
Beyond that, Obama is the incumbent and he’s tall. Democratic political strategists know that those advantages can make a candidate look good next to almost anybody.
How tall is Obama?
Edit: I saw McCain in person last week and was really taken aback by how small he was. That never came across to me on tv.
Obama’s around 6’1".
But I think what everyone really wants to know is his shoe size. 
Have to update this, after yesterday’s results in Delaware. Huge deal, and makes the Republican chances at taking the Senate a lot smaller (& they were small to begin with).
But what about O’Donnell’s hard-hitting views on the issues of the day?: Christine O'Donnell Anti-Masturbation Video | Rachel Maddow
I saw Bill Clinton yesterday and shook his hand at a fundraiser for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. Bubba’s lost a lot of weight but is still tall and very broad-shouldered.
Given the “winners” that the Republicans are promoting right now, it’s a dead certain lock, unless of course they can pull off another 2000 election.
Of course, a counter-example (on the Senate level) is in PA, where Specter would probably have won, and Sestak is currently selling for 20 cents on the dollar on Intrade.
For – silly question.
It was a 52.6% for Ford, 47.4% for Reagan split in the floor vote. I work in politics professionally. That is not a “comfortable” win in any situation, and for an incumbent (of sorts), that’s a disastrous result.
Ford is unique in that he was never an elected incumbent. He wasn’t elected as VP and he wasn’t elected as President, and I think that would play a part in his primary/convention results. He was only an incumbent due to Agnew’s peccadilloes coming public, and he was only president because Congress finally got the goods on Nixon. He had never stood for national office…in effect, he was going into the convention as a completely new candidate, except for the albatross of Nixon’s pardon hanging around his neck.
LOL at the idea that Obama is going to have to fight for the nomination in 2012.