Could a primary challenge make President Obama adopt MORE progressive policies?

[Ken Burch]

Poll question: Could a primary challenge make President Obama adopt MORE progressive policies?

There's another poll that deals with the question of whether the president could actually be denied renomination. That's not what THIS poll is about:

What we're looking at here is whether a primary challenge, by demonstrating widespread support for a more progressive and less corporate-subservient model of politics, could actually give the president the ammunition he needs to justify showing the Beltway/Wall Street types the White House door and creating a new administration and new policies that could lead him and the party to political renewal and a larger victory in 2012.

Could a challenge, then, create better policies and a stronger and more politically effective president?

[FrenchieCat]

1. It would create a Republican President.

So.....

[Ken Burch]

2. The reason the last two primary challenges led to that was not because of the challenges

It was because of the harsh way the supporters of the challenger were treated by the party leadership. Had their been magnanimity and had those leaderships of the past admitted that the insurgents deserved to be treated with respect and acknowledged to represent equal and equally valid wings of the party WITH the leadership and the regulars, the election of Republican presidents would have been avoided.

And the other problem was that, in both cases, the leadership insisted on nominating discredited frontrunners(Humphrey in '68 and Carter in '80). Now Jimmy Carter and Hubert Humphrey were both good, decent men, but they should both have faced reality about the doomed nature of their candidacies and withdrawn from the race before the conventions.

Humphrey was doomed to lose once the massive swing of popular feeling against the war occurred in the late spring and summer of 1968. President Carter was doomed to lose, and probably knew it, the moment the embassy was taken. Neither of those events were the responsibility of the insurgent forces in the party.

[BklnDem75]

23. What the hell are you talking about?

The only reason why Humphrey ran in the first place is because LBJ endured primaries that fractured the Democratic Party into four factions. Why even try to rewrite history like that? The sad thing about your post is that you're claiming that both incumbents should have quit because they were weakened. They were only weakened after the primaries, so I don't know how you can claim the challenges had nothing to do with it.

[levander]

5. Same excuse they used against Hillary...

And, it was bullshit then too.

[BklnDem75]

27. Surely you know the difference...

Between two primary candidates going at eachother and trying to primary a sitting president. I'm pretty sure you do.

[NorthCarolina]

53. I disagree. (nt)

[struggle4progress]

55. bingo

[davepc]

3. Remember when Buchanan et al did that to Bush Sr. in 1992? And how well it worked out for them....

[levander]

4. That was Perot, not Buchanan..

Perot got mostly conservative votes. A businessman from Texas? If you were gonna label the guy, he was a conservative and even after diving out of the election due to ridiculous paranoia about his family being attacked, he jumped back in the race and still ended up with (I believe) 20% of the vote. Without Perot, H W Bush would have slammed Clinton in '92.

And, Perot was a general election challenger, not a primary challenger.

[PBS Poll-435]

6. Perot got mostly conservative votes...Without Perot, H W Bush would have slammed Clinton in '92.

:shrug:

:wtf:

[wyldwolf]

19. Not true. All indications are Perot split the vote about evenly and Clinton still would have won...

... the electoral college.

:shrug:

[PBS Poll-435]

24. Yeah. I know.

I reposted comments that didn't exactly reconcile...


And, btw... Good to see ya!

[depakid]

35. Perot changed the dynamics of the campaign

There's a very good chance that without Perot hammering Bush, Clinton's campaign wouldn't have survived being the sole focus of the Republican attack machine.

[wyldwolf]

42. pure speculation, and Perot hammeredd Clinton's campaign, too.

Like few other political topics, the issue of Perot's effect on the '92 race brings out a lot of conjecture in opposition to actual fact.

[depakid]

45. Ditto on your part-

Despite your specious assertion of "actual fact."

The only fact here is that Perot changed the dynamics of the campaign in complex ways- and no one can go back and run a simulation or look at polls with any confidence.

Your intuition, education and experience militates one way- mine another.

One thing for sure though- ole "I'm all ears" with his charts and graphs was right about "that sucking sound" we heard with NAFTA

As tens of millions from Michigan to the Michoacán can well attest to.

[wyldwolf]

52. It's not ditto on my part. I've had this conversation with dozens of DUers...

... all who were anxious to prove that Clinton's win in '92 was Ross Perot's fault. No one has yet proven it. All I get is repeated talking points originated in the Washington Times.

I don't suspect you'll prove it either.

[davepc]

8. No, it was Buchanan. He ran a serious challenge against Bush and won 36% of the vote in NH primary

Perot didn't run in any primaries.

Buchanan's challenge was fueled by the belief that Bush Sr. wasn't conservative enough. He was a serious insurgency inside the Republican party and part of his deal to back down at the convention was to get the Keynote where he gave the famous culture wars speech.

[levander]

10. What I was saying..

Was that I don't think Buchanan hurt Bush in '92. A bad economy and a 3rd party challenger in the general election who got more conservative votes than liberal is why he lost.

[PBS Poll-435]

11. How can you peel "conservative" votes off of the Republican candidate without it hurting him/her?

Doesn't really make any sense.

[levander]

17. In the primaries, it doesn't "peel off" conservatives..

because everybody's just deciding what conservative to vote for in the general election.

Buchanan didn't necessarily "peel off" conservatives votes from H W Bush in the general election. Because, Buchanan didn't run in the general election.

Perot did peel off conservatives votes from H W Bush in the general election. Because, Perot did run in the general election.

My comment saying "Buchanan wasn't the problem, Perot was" was in rebuttal to a post that said Buchanan hurt H W Bush in '92.

[Hippo_Tron]

41. Oh bullcrap, Perot practically ran to the left of Clinton

http://www.ontheissues.org/Ross_Perot.htm

His positions on most issues were basically about where Clinton was and on some very prominent ones (NAFTA and US troops in Europe for example) he was to the left of Clinton. Perot got mostly liberal/moderate votes but many of them were liberal/moderate Republicans. That was pretty much the last election in which there was a large constituency of liberal/moderate Republicans.

[salguine]

7. Look: He campaigned on progressive policies which he promptly abandoned as soon as

the oath of office was concluded. So a primary challenger prods him to start championing those same progressive policies again. He's already shown clearly that he was completely full of shit the first time; why would anyone believe him again?

[Jamastiene]

16. Exactly

The challenger should win in this scenario.

[depakid]

37. Actually, it began right after he secured the nomination

Some may recall the month or so of gratuitous slaps at the base (and key constituencies).

Some might also recall that by failing to go after and define the opponent (despite being handed incredible opportunities via outlandish statements) the campaign faltered in the polls and was actually behind in mid September until McCain's bizarre behavior during the financial crisis sealed the deal among anxious voters, worried about financial ruin.

[PBS Poll-435]

9. K&U

:eyes:

[Ozymanithrax]

12. Should President Obama win the next election, he is a lame duck...

and will do what ever he wants. Congressmen and Senators have a reason to fear primary challenges. They are not term limited. Presidents are term limited and challenges just make getting re elected harder and more expensive.

[flamingdem]

13. No Fooling Around. A Left candidate is just what Repukes want to divide our party nt

[Hekate]

14. Split the Dem vote and hand the WH back to the Repubs on a silver platter. Swell idea....

Are you aware that 87% of Liberal Democrats are happy with Obama, according to the new Weekly Gallup Poll?

http://www.gallup.com/poll/121199/Obama-Weekly-Job-Approval-Demographic-Groups.aspx

Where does that leave your chances of forcing Obama to change his winning strategy?

Hekate

[salguine]

26. It actually rather seems like the Republicans have the White House now, so

I don't see much difference.

I'd like to know what a "liberal Democrat" is, regarding that poll. No one who calls themselves "liberal" that I know is very happy with Obama; the really liberal ones I know are pretty furious with him.

[Hekate]

30. The pollster parsed the responses by party and by ideology within party, if you go to the link. ...

The respondents would have self-identified.

Whenever I start believing "no one who calls themselves liberal... is very happy with Obama" I realize I need to get out into the real world for awhile and away from the tiny non-representative sample that is DU.

As for Democratic WH = Republican WH -- Ralphie, is that you again?

Hekate

[Jamastiene]

15. In that case, the challenger should win, imho.

The fact still remains that President Obama won in a landslide...and he campaigned on policies that the Republicans called socialism, communism, liberal, etc.

It is going to take a real upheaval in this country to move the every changing "center" back to something even remotely close to center. Right now, the "center" is to the right of Reagan and the Democratic Party has been infiltrated by a bunch of Reagan Democrats. It is not that they are really the majority. It is that they are the ruling elite of the party who decide everything and tell us we are going to like it whether we like it or not. I don't appreciate being told I like something that infringes on my freedom and my right to choose...AT ALL.

President Obama won with a clear mandate. Yet, he's doing everything in his power to please the Reagan Democrat wing of the Democratic Party. He's not following our mandate. Why should we follow his?

If a challenger comes along who has the balls to stick to liberal values, that challenger should win and take this country in the direction it needs to get us through this Great Recession before it turns into another full fledged Great Depression.

[TexasProgresive]

21. When has that ever worked?- give us the history.

[CTLawGuy]

18. if he thought that he were endangered

then, for policies over which he has total control, he could be pushed to the left. However, for most policies, Congress is involved and a primary challenge would not have an effect on them. I.e. it wouldn't make Lieberman any more amenable to a public option.

[TexasProgresive]

20. Other-It will give the WH to the R'pukes

Tell me when a sitting president of any party ever survived a challenge by his own party and won the presidency or if he lost that the challenger won. I don't think it happens.

[quaker bill]

22. Candidates

generally move toward their voters. If challenged from the far left, a candidate will work to inspire GOTV among his/her reliable supporters. If the challenge is near successful, the candidate might move a bit toward the opponent to attempt to shift the ideological divide. This however, is quite unlikely. The likely outcome of a primary challenge is for Obama to move toward the center, if he moves at all.

[Tom Rinaldo]

25. No it would not, a Republican would become President OR Obama would become more centrist

Obama would win the primaries and then one of two things would happen. Most likely he would lose the General Election with the Democratic Party bitterly divided. But if Obama won he would be less Progressive than he is now. Start with the fact that Obama would never again face reelection, so he would never again need progressive support to remain in office. Second factor in that he would have a big grudge against whatever progressives tried to defeat him. Third factor in that he will have needed to court the support of centrist voters to replace progressive defectors during the primaries. Obama would be free to frame himself as a Strong President who was willing to defy his special interests base when needed to do what is right for America etc. In reality he would become much more beholden to those who saved his ass, not fried it.

[Jennicut]

28. No. It has never worked before. It moves a moderate more to the right.

[freddie mertz]

29. Not likely. He's shown a willingness to say whatever it takes to win in campaigns.

And forget about, quite literally, after its over.

I would only support a primary opponent, if it came to that, with the idea of replacing him with a more forthright and reliably progressive alternative.

[WI_DEM]

31. all it would do is divide the party like in 1980 with the Carter/kennedy race.

[timeforpeace]

32. At the very least it will certainly make him wish he had.

[KoKo]

33. Didn't vote your poll..but if a Progressive Dem came in NOW...it might make a huge difference.

If they waited until after the "Mid-Terms" they'd be trashed as a "spoiler." If a Progressive or several want to start raising a fuss for a possible run in 2012 they should come in NOW and not WAIT.

Otherwise, I don't think it would matter a couple years down the road. So, I didn't vote...but I think it's worthwhile for Progressives to start coming out and pounding table for attention that Rahm and Congress don't want to give them.

[JVS]

34. Inaction and silence certainly won't.

[Armstead]

36. In the primaries -- Then it's back to Center Right

[JVS]

38. It depends on how well they do.

HRC probably wouldn't be SOS right now had she not stayed in to the very end and ended up cutting a deal with Obama. Policy directions may have also been negotiated. A strong progressive challenger might be able to change who the people at subordinate levels of power are and how the administration is to act in order to keep peace in the party.

[Lilith Velkor]

39. Holy shit, someone tackled the Pope?

That's fucking awesome!

[WT Fuheck]

40. he'd just do what he did in 2008.

Pretend to be centrist enough to mollify liberals during the campaign, then govern like a any other neocon if he's elected.

[Kaleva]

43. The vast majority of liberal Democrats already approve of Obama's job performance.

There would be no widespread support for a candidate further to the left of Obama.

[mmonk]

44. If you think the party hates the left now, wait until that happens.

It would backfire. Picking off the righties in Congress with primary challenges would be a better strategy.

[Kaleva]

46. History shows that very few liberals support candidates such as Kucinich.

[mmonk]

47. I couldn't find the words Dennis Kucinich in the OP.

[Kaleva]

48. I didn't say he was mentioned. I used the term "such as".

[mmonk]

49. Why name him at all?

Many of us know people won't risk voting for him for concern the Republicans would win. Others for other reasons. He isn't behind the talk some are floating. That is all.

[Kaleva]

50. I didn't say he was behind the talk some are floating.

[Orsino]

51. Could, yes.

America is not yet a country, though, that can adopt many more progressive measures.

[Ken Burch]

54. And if our party's leaders continue to be obsessed with being "centrist"

it NEVER will be.

Democrats never gain from being to the right of history.

[mmonk]

56. In ways, it has been more progressive in the past

There only seems to be 1 degree difference between the "Third Way" and the American right, that being on what industries to subsidize. Both parties have been working to disassemble the progressive infrastructure of past Democrats and coalitions. If the party remains in the control of the DLC much longer, I will not remain in it.