Posted on 09/19/2011 12:11:24 PM PDT by Danae
"President Obama’s smooth path to the Democratic nomination may have gotten rockier Monday, after a group of liberal leaders, including former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, announced plans to challenge the incumbent in primaries next year.
The group said the goal is to offer up a handful of candidates from various fields and areas where the president either has failed to stake out a “progressive” position or where he has “drifted toward the corporatist right.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Thats true.
I still think Johnson planned to gain the nomination at a brokered convention, which is why he didn’t endorse Humphrey, who did gain the nomination the old-fashioned way.
Of course, by the time of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and after the assination of RFK and MLK, and all the “peace” marches and riots, Johnson couldn’t have been nominated for dogcatcher.
Try Ted Kennedy's 1980 challenge of Jimmy Carter in the primaries. Carter beat Kennedy for the Dem nomination, but then got his ears boxed by the cowboy from California....Reagan.
I remember all that, but my sense was that the conservatives of the time saw McGovern as so radical, that there were going to go with what they felt was the sure thing, rather than any releatively unknown republican, just to keep McGovern out at all costs.
I wonder if Garage Mouth here runs against da firs black prez, will she get da black vote?
This bears watching. The Republicans are totally geared up to campaign against Obama, just as they were to campaign against Hitlery in 2008. If the Rats pull a switcheroo, will the Pubbies be caught off guard and lose the whole thing in a shuffle? Do younger voters even know who Ralph Nader is?
I’d send Nader money if I didn’t accidentally send it to the wrong David Lewis
What happened to change that? How I long for the days when the big states (like CA) put up favorite son candidates and the roll calls went on all night at the conventions. Constituencies traded votes in smoke filled rooms (we can do without that) and you had to wait until it was all done to find out who the nominees would be. That was really fun for the viewer.
I've been watching (or listening before TV came to my town) the conventions since I was a little girl. I remember hearing parts of the Truman convention on the radio and watched both the Stevenson and the Eisenhower conventions, as well as the Kennedy and Nixon conventions on TV.
As a college kid, my husband had the good fortune of knowing the British Counsel General in Chicago in 1956, and he was given press passes to both the Dem and the Republican Conventions. He was able to get into those smoke filled rooms and watched the pols working behind the scenes. It's not even fun any more. Everyone knows who the nominees will be before they ever start.
You’re correct Obama is done if this goes through.But it is Nader.I also remember seeing an article that WEINER was going to challenge Obama BEFORE WeinerGate. So the Obama machine will be calling the papers with dirt on whoever dares challenges thewon.
Intended effect of this headline: "There, ya see Marge! I told you he wasn't a liberal! The liberals all want him out! He only seems liberal because of all that scary extremist republican propaganda!"
“Let’s save the cheering for when he has his ass unceremoniously handed to him and he is dumped onto the street OUTSIDE the White House, suddenly unemployed, in 2012.”
I’ll be cheering from the moment Hussein issues the typical Dimrat condescending non-concession concession speech until the O-hole leaves the White Hut.
For whatever it’s worth, the Peas of Sh!t pres(id)ent gets a few days in 2013.
Yes, it's the same Ralph Nader.
Be careful who you love a primary challenger to Obama could get the blue dog dems and independents.Whoever challenges TheWon (if they make it w/o getting they’re name removed from the ballot (SEE OBAMA’S FIRST ELECTION)will ‘appear’ to pull a moderate Clinton while pleasing the progressives.Bayh,Hillary or Bloomberg could challenge thewon.(Hill the witch has said no but that Chelsea could run in 2016.)
If we had Nader challenge Obozo in the primary and Herman Cain challenge him in the general election, then we would have the spectacle of a full blooded Arab against a half-breed Arab in the primary and a full-blooded black man against a half-breed black man in the general.
The most damage is inflicted during the primaries - the nuclear proving grounds.
Before the GOP wounds are healed the media has its rubbing alcohol ready.
Before the favorite DEM is mortally wounded, the media gets everyone to hug and make up.
I watched Judge Napolitano’s show on Fox Business this weekend. He interviewed Dennis Kucinich and then Ralph Nader, both of whom- like I assume most of you- I don’t usually agree with at all. He asked them both about Obama as a president and I never thought it would happen but I agreed 100% with everything they had to say about him. From being in bed with big business (e.g. GE, Google) at the expense of small businesses to the illegal war in Libya that he didn’t even bother to consult Congress about, the Right and Left are both pissed and largely for the same reasons even if they have different views on how things should be done and the end goals. That is how you know Obama’s toast- when small government people have the same general gripes about him as the big goverment folks despite different views on the world and different goals.
That was my point. When a sitting potus is challenged by his own party with a primary contended - even upon winning the nomination he does not get re-elected.
I may even go on some lefty sites and make a big fuss over Nader running..:)
Your memory is good. Congressman Pete McCloskey (CA) challenged Nixon from the left, and Congressman John Ashbrook (OH) challenged Nixon from the right.
Neither challenge amounted to much. The Ashbrook Center, a conservative think tank, is named for Ashbrook.
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