Will the Democrats Replace Obama in 2012?

Pretty catchy title, I think, the kind real columnists use. First of all, I want to go on record as saying I'm going out of the Obama-bashing business. No more. It's one of my New Year's Resolutions. I'm motivated by something that Scout said about Boo Radley; it's like killing a mockingbird. I can be as decent as Scout, I think (although that's tough, come to think of it). Barack's problem is that he's just not up to the job. Call it anything you like, inexperience, naivete, constitutional inability to be tough when tough is needed, fundamental confusion about what a chief executive is supposed to do - whatever, it's obvious the media got carried away in 2008 with the chance to elect either the first minority or the first woman President, and did not pay enough attention to the very specific attributes of the candidates in question, focusing solely on the "narrative line" and newsworthiness of this novelty. It was just too good for the networks and news outlets to pass up, and thus, once again, we got sold a bill of goods. There is a very real difference between an Image and an Actual Person, because it's the second version of reality that actually shows up in the Oval Office later, not the Virtual Hologram. There's no point in going over and over this obvious situation, and there aren't going to be any big surprises from here on out. It's all kind of painful to watch, actually.

The question is what the Democratic Party will do about it. Will they run Obama in 2012? My guess is that they certainly will. I base this guess on the party's traditional tendency to fulfill death wishes. The Democrats value things more than winning, a trait not much shared by their Republican opposition. The leadership of the Democrats is kind of like a mediocre college coach who prizes things like "attitude" and "sticking with the program" and "working his way up" to the starting rotation, et cetera, more than chalking up W's in the Win-Loss column. When it's your turn in the Democratic Party, then you get the Big Job. I used to write little parodies a few years ago about Mr. Mumbles & The Diva, based on the Congressional leadership of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. If you can find two people in the country, in any line of work, who are less inspirational and effective than these two, then you should really submit their names to the Guinness Book of World Records. With substantial, sometimes huge, majorities in the House and Senate, these two stiffs were unable to make any dent in the Republican juggernaut. When Bush was President, Pelosi, who presided over the Constitutional body responsible for all budgetary appropriations, could not figure out a way to deprive Bush of the money he needed for the (a) Iraq War, (b) the Afghanistan War, (c) his Black Sites, or anything else. Although Bush and Cheney would admit on national television every couple of weeks that they were torturing people, Pelosi could not could come up with any argument that the failure of the United States to observe the Convention Against Torture (signed by Reagan), which requires the investigation and prosecution of anyone suspected of torture within a party-state's jurisdiction (and remembering that treaties are the "supreme law of the land" under the Constitution), might at the very least be grounds for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney. Clinton was impeached because he horsed around with an intern and then didn't want to talk about it. The Democrats could not see their way through to impeachment when dealing with confessed felonies and war crimes. The Democrats play badminton, the Republicans play Rollerball.

I always thought Pelosi seemed more like someone who should be walking up to you at a party in Pacific Heights with a tray of canapés than the leader of one of the world's great legislative bodies. Mr. Mumbles, on the other hand, was so completely intimidated by the badly outnumbered Republicans in the Senate that he would blanch and hide under his desk if Bill Frist or Mitch McConnell handed him a note reading, "We might filibuster that." That's all it took. So while the official line now is that Obama is too "bipartisan" or too accommodating, in truth it's the whole group of Democrats in Washington who don't know how to return fire.

It's possible the Republicans might bail them out in 2012 by running a lunatic like Sarah Palin or a cornpone empty suit like Mike Huckabee. I think this is the GOP leadership's great fear, in fact. This would represent a hijacking of the Republican Party by the Tea Party zealots. It's hardly impossible. A recent poll demonstrates that about 40% of the American populace really, truly believes that the universe was created in seven days by an omnipotent being. Forty percent. In such a country, just about anything is possible. However, I think it's too soon even for an open-air asylum like the United States for Sarah Palin to win a presidential election. The independents (the modern key to any election) would recoil in horror, weigh the real consequences of their self-indulgent pouting about Obama, and rush to the polls to give the O-Man another term. Sort of kicking the Apocalypse Can down the road a few years.

But if the Republicans can enforce their legendary discipline in their ranks and head off the Cuckoo Brigade, and run someone plausible, they'll probably win. In November, 2010 the Republicans pulled off the biggest midterm defeat of Congressional Democrats in the history of the United States (way to go Barack, Harry & Nancy! okay, that was absolutely the last time.) And that Republican winner (who might very well preside over the collapse of the American Republic) will, if s/he wins, defeat Barack Obama, who will advance to the Democratic nomination by acclamation, as the Democratic delegates shout out their approval in the form of a Voice Suicide Note.