They aren't extinct, just hiding in da bushes.
Posted on 08/08/2011 8:52:14 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
As Democratic disgust with Obama’s debt fumbling spreads, Clinton supporters recall her '3 a.m. phone call' warnings—and angry, frustrated liberals are muttering that she should mount a 2012 challenge.
| August 7, 2011 8:58 PM EDT
At a New York political event last week, Republican and Democratic office-holders were all bemoaning President Obama’s handling of the debt-ceiling crisis when someone said, “Hillary would have been a better president.”
“Every single person nodded, including the Republicans,” reported one observer.
At a luncheon in the members’ dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Saturday, a 64-year-old African-American from the Bronx was complaining about Obama’s ineffectiveness in dealing with the implacable hostility of congressional Republicans when an 80-year-old lawyer chimed in about the president’s unwillingness to stand up to his opponents. “I want to see blood on the floor,” she said grimly.
A 61-year-old white woman at the table nodded. “He never understood about the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy,’” she said.
Looking as if she were about to cry, an 83-year-old Obama supporter shook her head. “I’m so disappointed in him,” she said. “It’s true: Hillary is tougher.”
During the last few days, the whispers have swelled to an angry chorus of frustration about Obama’s perceived weaknesses. Many Democrats are furious and heartbroken at how ineffectual he seemed in dealing with Republican opponents over the debt ceiling, and liberals are particularly incensed by what they see as his capitulation to conservatives on fundamental liberal principles.
In Connecticut, a businessman who raised money for Obama in 2008 said, “I’m beyond disgusted.” In New Jersey, a teacher reported that even her friends in the Obama administration are grievously disillusioned with his lack of leadership—and many have begun to whisper about a Democratic challenge for the 2012 presidential nomination. “I think people are furtively hoping that Hillary runs,” she said.
The son of a longtime Democratic congressman from Texas, a 73-year-old lawyer, is so enraged with Obama that he’s threatening not to vote for the 2012 Democratic ticket—the first time in his entire life that he’s contemplated such apostasy.
Among many of the 18 million Americans who supported Hillary Clinton in 2008, the reaction is simple and bitter: “We told you so.”
On Real Time With Bill Maher, the host said that as far as he was concerned, Obama might as well be a Republican, and added that he thought last week represented the tipping point in Obama’s presidency. Wondering if liberals have “buyer’s remorse” about Obama, Maher asked his panel whether Clinton would have been a better president.
“Yes,” replied astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, adding that Clinton would have been “a more effective negotiator in the halls of Congress.”
“She knows how to deal with difficult men,” Maher agreed.
Among Clinton fans, particularly older women, the language was frequently far more caustic. “Obama has no spine and no balls,” said a 67-year-old New Yorker.
In recent days, political conversations from inside the Beltway to office water coolers all over America have abounded with unflattering comparisons between Obama and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, a Capitol Hill veteran who was a master of knocking heads to get things done. A Texas Democrat, Johnson served as a representative, a senator, the Senate minority leader, the Senate majority whip, and vice president before becoming president when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. “Unlike Obama, he knew how to work the system,” said one political reporter.
In his New York Times Sunday Review essay “What Happened to Obama?” Emory University psychology professor Drew Westen summed up the president’s lack of experience with devastating succinctness.
“Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he occasionally, as a state senator in Illinois, voted ‘present’ on difficult issues,” wrote Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.
The presidential scholar Matthew Dickinson went even further with a post under the headline “Run, Hillary, Run!” on the blog Presidential Power. “She did warn you,” Dickinson reminded his readers.
“Remember that 3 a.m. phone call? Remember the warning about the rose-colored petals falling from the sky? Remember about learning on the job? Sure you do. Doesn’t a part of you, deep down, realize she was right?” wrote Dickinson, a political-science professor at Middlebury College. “If I heard it once this last week, I heard it a thousand times: You were duped by Obama’s rhetoric—the whole ‘hopey-changey’ thing. And you wanted to be part of history, too—to help break down the ultimate racial barrier. That’s OK. We were all young once. But now it’s time to elect someone who can play hardball, who understands how to be ruthless, who will be a real ... uh ... tough negotiator in office. There won’t be any debate about Hillary’s, er, ‘man-package.’”
Among Clinton fans, particularly older women, the language was frequently far more caustic. “Obama has no spine and no balls,” said a 67-year-old New Yorker.
Other observers contrasted the president’s declining popularity with Clinton’s widely acclaimed performance as secretary of State. “To be blunt, her resume outshines the incumbent’s,” wrote Dickinson, noting that Clinton’s approval rating is close to 70 percent while Obama’s is around 40 percent.
Such polls notwithstanding, insiders insist that Clinton will not challenge her president for the 2012 nomination, and many pundits dismiss the idea as political suicide. “A challenge from Clinton would be a complete disaster, both for her and for the Democrats,” wrote Jon Bernstein on the Plain Blog political site.
Political experts point out that Republicans’ hatred of the Clintons in the 1990s was just as virulent as their efforts to destroy Obama’s presidency in the last couple of years. Longtime analysts also remember the carnage that ensued when Sen. Ted Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, fracturing the party and paving the way for Ronald Reagan’s election. Four years earlier, Reagan himself had challenged an incumbent Republican, President Gerald Ford; Reagan lost the nomination, Ford lost the presidency, and Carter was elected.
However unlikely a Democratic challenger might seem at present, Obama would be foolish not to heed the deep dissatisfaction represented by such speculation, which is now spreading like an ominous brush fire. Given the abundance of devastating economic news lately, he would also do well to remember the Clintons’ rallying cry from the 1992 election.
“There’s no question in my mind that Obama is a one-term president,” says one passionate Democrat. “Even if he were a great president, this economy is a calamity. And in the end, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’”
“No one ever had to tell Hillary that,” says a disgruntled member of Clinton’s 18 million.
Did you know that John Kerry was awarded THREE Purple Heart?
;-)
apparently old white liberals are as easily impressed by the toughness of a aging badly dressed butch woman as they are by a black guy with an affirmative action Ivy League degree, who wears suits and doesn’t speak in ebonics
Hillary has zero achievements, except for keeping Bubba from leaving her. Just look at her track record as Senator and SoS.
Does ANYONE think the world respects our foreign policy, or that she even has any significant role in shaping it?
My theory is that the obamites have compromising pictures of Hillary with her girlfriends, Bubba with his hookers, Clinton family bank records, and maybe Chelsea’s DNA, in their vault.
If Bill decides she can’t win, then it is off the table for sure.
Understood. BUT, Carter wasn't black. Obama's election was pushed for by the media because they wanted a bullet proof candidate who no one could go against with out fear of being called a racist.
As soon as this part of the race/"political epiphany" is contested, they will close ranks and everyone calling upon these “truths” will once again be racists.
She had the same platform as Obama, but she's more patient.
She would have done the same things over time, but because she's more patient she would have done it slowly and it would have been harder to catch her which is worse IMO.
She is evil.
Excellent and so very true to the excuses!
For some reason, I believe you.
More obama trashing from Drew Weston here:
Can't happen that way. We're on record way before them.
All anyone has to ask her will be, “If Obama’s so awful, why did you dutifully serve him the past few years?”
Hillary is a total pshycopath
If she ever got the power of the presidency, she would never let go. She would start a full blown WWIII to keep that power.
One more thing, we here on FR knew from the very beginning that Hotlery was right about Obama.
They aren't extinct, just hiding in da bushes.
What I don’t get about all this is, if these people had their way, Obama would have raised the debt ceiling with no spending cuts attached? This, they think, would have prevented a downgrade? Do they think that their policies of spending more and more will somehow miraculously turn into an economic boom... these people have their heads so far up their posteriors, they don’t know sh!+ from shine-ola!
Do not fall for the Clinton savior!
Hillary is as much of a socialist as Obama. Never forget that.
The Clinton’s have tremendous political power. Hillary was given a special assignment by the power brokers.
Who has been meeting (very quietly)with the islamists and socialists around the world?
Oh, there are some reports here and there, but no details.
The “Arab Spring” was created by Clinton working with the socialists and islamists and giving them the green light.
It is happening in Mexico now. Fast & Furious is connected to this. We know Hezbollah is in Mexico now and is getting help from the most socialist of the drug cartels.
Obama made the outreach to the islamists. Hillary represents the socialists. They are working together around the world to bring capitalism, Christianity and Judaism to an end!
This is exactly what worries me. We’ve heard lots about other SoS, but not this one.
We will know that Obama is in really BIG trouble when one, or both of the two major black columnists..Clarence Page and/or Eugene Robinson..piublicly say that it might be better if he doesn’t run rather than gets crushed in the election...IMHO, they’re the only one who can say it FIRST..then look for sojme of the CBC members to say the same thing..
Yeah, but her response to that would have been she was married to an unreliably low-some slob louse and she needed a reliable paycheck. :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.