Well, I’m glad to see we can do away with all of the unpleasantness and infighting which typically accompanies a spirited presidential primary. Mittens, T-Paw, Huck, Sarah, Michele and the Donald can all save themselves a lot of time and money and just go home now. At least that’s the story according to Ralph Nader.
The stars are aligned for Barack Obama’s re-election in November 2012. He won’t join Jimmy Carter to be the second Democrat in 120 years to lose a second term.
Five things are playing in Obama’s favor.
First, the Republicans — driven by their most conservative members in Congress — will face a primary with many candidates who will advance harsh ideological positions. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and others might as well be on the Democratic National Committee payroll. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s reverse Robin Hood plan to cut more than $6 trillion in spending over a decade will provide the outrage, stoked by a sitting president possessed of verbal discipline.
The field of Republican weaklings is already getting smaller. This week, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour dropped out of the race for the presidency.
Nader goes on to posit a number or reasons why voters will flee the GOP in droves after their historic 2010 victories. Among these, he says, will be voter outrage over the Republicans’ “attacks on unions” along with a lack of exciting opponents and a failure to attract opposition from Big Business because Obama already sold out the little guy to them.
But, as Andrew Malcolm points out at the Top of the Ticket, that doesn’t mean that Mr. Nader will be one of the ones voting to keep Obama in office.
Always the wild card, Nader might predict a second term for Obama but that doesn’t mean he’ll be supporting him.
“I’d never vote for him,” Nader told Politico on Wednesday. “I will never vote for anybody who has a terrible record like that, who’s done what he’s done for Wall Street and turned his back on the people who need him.”
It’s not clear what prompts Nader to keep popping his head up every cycle, but his track record leaves something to be desired. This is also little more than a re-hash of the consumer advocate’s usual “pox on both their houses” diatribe. While it’s true that Americans still hold a decidedly dismal view of Congress and aren’t in much better mood about the President, I somehow doubt Nader is the magician they are looking to for electoral guidance. But hey… thanks for chiming in, Ralph!
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