Democrat Challenge to Obama

Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune, Obama's hometown newspaper, has said that Obama should not seek reelection. Two recent congressional losses just accent that notion. Naturally, all talk has been of Hillary or someone ideologically similar to Hillary challenging Obama. A recent Gallup poll shows that 23% of all Democrats call themselves "conservative," 39% call themselves "moderates," and one percent do not know. Only 38% of Democrats described themselves as "liberal" or "very liberal."

Why not support a challenge to Obama by some Democrat from his right? Joseph Farah at WorldNetDaily suggests that Sarah Palin register as a Democrat and run against Obama as a high-profile, well-funded challenger. Better, I think, to get someone like Dan Boren, a retiring Democrat congressman from Oklahoma. There are still a few veteran Democrats whose careers predate the leftist hijacking of their party.

Consider that in the Republican Party, only 4% of all Republicans call themselves "liberal" or "very liberal," while a whopping 71% of Republicans call themselves "conservative" or "very conservative." Yet it is routine to have serious Republican candidates who are anything but conservative -- the media love to call them "moderates." Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has been captured by leftist interest groups. Isn't it time for an actual moderate Democrat to run for the nomination? 

Obama has votes to lose among conservatives, and probably most of those are conservative Democrats: currently, 20% of self-identified conservatives approve of the job Obama is doing. Right now Obama, in particular, is vulnerable to conservative Democrats in the South. 

The NLRB goon squads are fighting to keep jobs out of South Carolina. The Obama reaction to the BP oil spill destroyed tens of thousands of good, paying jobs in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and Obama deliberately misstated what the panel of experts he assembled said was needed to prevent further damage. Gibson Guitars, located in Tennessee, was raided this August for the using the same wood that its competitors outside Tennessee use (without, apparently, concerning the feds), and it was raided in 2009 with no charges ever filed or its seized property returned. In January, Obama sought to effectively close down much coal mining in West Virginia by revoking longstanding permits to mine. 

If a moderate Democrat ran, basing his campaign opposing NRLB and EPA and standing up for working people whose jobs Obama's ideological purists on the radical left destroyed, that Democrat could probably win primaries outright in South Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi. With momentum -- and the South Carolina primary, early on, could create that momentum -- the moderate Democrat might almost sweep the South -- the eleven Old Confederate states plus West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma. 

What about outside the South? In the very conservative Great Plains states, Gallup provides a conservative/liberal breakdown for each state as follows: North Dakota (46.7%/ 15.7%), South Dakota (46.9%/14.3%), Nebraska (42.0%/19.2%) and Kansas (42.7%/15.7%) -- Iowa and Missouri could easily fall into that bunch as well -- and in the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho (48.5%/14.9%), Wyoming (47.4%/14.6%), Montana (41.0%/18.4%) and Utah (47.3%/18.4%). New Mexico also is very close to being as conservative. 

There are enough lopsidedly conservative states in the South, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains that a strong and serious moderate Democrat could win half of the states of the nation. This challenge would work best if the moderate Democrat attacked Obama for destroying jobs in the private sector and holding social positions which are out of sync with the Heartland. 

Could this cost Obama the nomination? Probably not, but maybe it would just ensure a decisive defeat in the 2012 election, with millions of Democrats either voting Republican or staying at home. Why is it that we conservatives allow the left to muddle the Republican nomination but, with our much greater numbers, we never contest Democrats for their presidential nomination? Much of the South is fuming now -- it ought to be fuming -- at this job-destroying president with special animus towards the South. Just one Democrat champion, who gets plenty of coverage on talk radio, on Fox News, and on internet periodicals -- and we could win the war.