Video: Talking fundraising and Obama primary challenges on KION

Earlier this morning, I made an appearance on KION TV in California’s Central Coast region, speaking with news anchor Nick Emmons. Nick — who is also my cousin — asked me about Barack Obama’s fundraising numbers and whether he can meet the apparently new target of $750 million for the 2012 cycle. We also discuss the likelihood of a primary challenge to Obama:

The problem with a primary challenge is putting together an organization with enough strength to credibly challenge an incumbent. We might see a primary challenge from perennial fringe candidates like Rep. Dennis Kucinich, especially since redistricting will likely leave him without a seat to defend in 2012. Those kinds of challenges will have no effect on Obama, who won’t feel at all pressured to move leftward to co-opt them. In order to be effective, a primary challenge would have to carry a real electoral threat of not winning the nomination, which would be an extraordinary event indeed for a sitting President.

So a challenger would have to be highly prominent, able to organize quickly and effectively, and immediately draw big donors away from Obama. The only Democrat that meets all three of those requirements is Hillary Clinton, who is widely perceived as being to Obama’s right. She has also been in Obama’s administration since his inauguration, and is participating in the biggest foreign-policy problem for Obama on his left, the Libya military action. Jerry Brown made a couple of runs at the presidential nomination more than two decades ago, and he just got back into the governor’s office this year, besides being 20 years older than Obama. Only Russ Feingold might have enough juice on the Left to make a go of it, but he lost his last statewide election, and Obama campaigned hard for him in that loss.

Unless something happens quickly — and given Obama’s head start, we’re talking weeks or days rather than months — there won’t be any primary challenge worth noting against Obama. But the downsizing of expectations on fundraising is rather interesting, especially since it looks as though Obama won’t meet the lower goal, either.