The assumption of Obama as the automatic Democratic Party nominee in 2012 takes another hit:
If you haven’t read today’s Wall Street Journal column by Senator James Webb (D-VA), you owe it to yourself. The key line is this one, where Webb argues that our “present-day diversity programs work against that notion, having expanded so far beyond their original purpose that they now favor anyone who does not happen to be white.”
What makes it key is: Why now? Why write this column today? What brought this particular issue out at this particular moment?
These questions are important, because Webb’s column is a virtual declaration of war on President Obama — at a time when Obama’s head must be already spinning after two weeks of racial strife from the NAACP and Andrew Breitbart. And a “recovery summer” that’s anything but. So it’s not often I find myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan, and when I do — even only partly so, like today — I always wash afterwards. But when Buchanan says that the White House is in a “panic” because it “fears it is losing white America,” he’s absolutely right.
But what Obama really ought to fear is losing his own party — because Webb’s column is just the most recent sign.
I just thought it was worth pointing this out, given that it appeared precisely one day after I was accused of being a political moron for stating that Obama is going to lose control of his party and will pushed to the exits during the 2012 Democratic primary, presumably in favor of the Lizard Queen. Now, I could quite clearly be wrong, and after all, the safe bet is to assume the status quo. After all, my original prediction of Obama as a one-term president is looking pretty good right now and I could have simply rolled with that if I was at all concerned about credibility as a political analyst.
But I’m not a political analyst and I find it much more interesting to follow trains of thought as they happen to occur. Go read Nate Silver and listen to his many convoluted explanations of why the polls prove the Democrats will hold the House and Senate this fall if you want professional political analysis. (My opinion is that they’ll lose both.) The point is that when you look at where the economy appears to be headed in the next two years and combine that with the probable Democratic electoral debacle this fall as well as the growing panic among Democratic office-holders and Obama’s increasingly disastrous poll numbers, it adds up to what I see as an unusually volatile Democratic primary.