Posted on 08/15/2012 12:02:43 PM PDT by smoothsailing
August 15, 2012
Jim Geraghty
The Wednesday edition of the Morning Jolt features the Obama campaign’s most indefensible, false, incendiary attack since their last one, a reason to doubt foreign policy columnists with unnamed sources, and then this thought about our political future…
What if 2012 Isn’t Obama’s Last Campaign?
Picture it: It’s December, and folks like you and I are celebrating the recent presidential campaign victory of Mitt Romney. It wasn’t a landslide; something on par with the Electoral College map of Bush vs. Kerry, and Romney winning the popular vote by two or three percentage points.
In that scenario, do you envision President Obama accepting defeat gracefully? Do you picture him congratulating President Romney on his victory, and pledging to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition? Do you think the president will be ready to move on to post-White House life, focusing upon memoir-writing, building his presidential library, some charitable and foundation work, and plenty of golf?
Or do you think President Obama, and David Axelrod, and Valerie Jarrett and all of the true believers will find some reason to believe the result is illegitimate? Some combination of SuperPAC spending and voter ID laws that they believe nullifies the results? I don’t mean a constitutional crisis where Obama refuses to recognize the results, I mean just a narrative of “Romney cheated” that will reassure liberals that their views really are popular, and a return to the natural order of their eternal string of victories is one election-law change away. (In liberals’ view of the world, they never suffer a legitimate defeat.)
Seeing that rotund, irate Iowa woman storm the stage at the state fair to berate Paul Ryan, I can’t help but suspect we’ll see a lot of lefty rage in response to a Romney victory. Romney, Ryan, Speaker Boehner and Majority/Minority Leader McConnell will have a full plate, and they may see Wisconsin-style protests on a national scale. Occupy Wall Street may not be completely deflated; a “stolen election” makes a heck of a rallying cry.
If there’s anything we’ve seen, it’s that President Obama loves to campaign – to hold fundraisers, to attend rallies, to attend ‘town meetings’ where the questioners mostly ask why people aren’t smart enough to see how great he is. In January 2013, former President Obama would find himself with a lot of time to do all that.
I’m not the first to ponder this question, or to come to the same suspicions. Mickey Kaus saw a signal in Obama’s gay marriage shift:
Thinking two steps ahead? If Barack Obama loses the 2012 election, do you think he’s going to quit elective politics, serve on a series of corporate and foundation boards, write a best-selling children’s book on being a Dad and a Lugaresque memoir describing how Fox News and Peter Orszag betrayed him? I don’t. I think he’s going to run again, Grover Cleveland style. That casts possible additional (distant) light on today’s endorsement of same-sex marriage: It may or may not help Obama in 2012. But it would much more reliably likely help him in 2016, when public opinion can be expected to have shifted further in favor of this social innovation. It would certainly help him in the Democratic primaries. ….
Aaron Goldstein was even more explicit: “Let’s say Obama loses in November. He has a ready made excuse for his defeat. Obama can say that the forces of darkness (i.e. opponents of gay marriage) are to blame for his defeat while patting himself on the back for his “courage” in supporting same sex marriage. It also helps to position him for a comeback in 2016 or 2020. Make no mistake. If Obama loses this fall it won’t be the last we see of him. By that time with a greater presence of voters born after 1980 chances are there will be more voters in favor of gay marriage which would give Obama an opportunity to claim he was ahead of the curve.”
Back in July, James Pethokoukis came up with five reasons the president might try to come back again:
1. Obama, always trim and fit, would be only 55 on Election Day 2016.
2. Obama would likely still have a deep reservoir of support among key Democratic interest groups including (most importantly) African Americans, gays, young voters, and the educated elite.
3. Many Democrats might be inclined to give an historic president a second chance, reasoning he was dealt an impossibly bad economic hand by George W. Bush. “Bush got two terms, and Obama just one? Please.”
4. While there could potentially be some big name rivals in 2016, including Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo, none seem as formidable as Ronald Reagan was to Ford in 1980.
5. The economy the next four years could be pretty rough thanks to high levels of U.S. debt and a possible eurozone implosion. The Obama years might be subject to some positive revisionist history by a friendly media. And as one gloomy economic analyst told me recently,”Whichever party wins the White House in 2012 won’t win again for 20 years.”
There are a lot of people who are emotionally invested in the notion of Barack Obama as a transformative, redeeming, era-defining national leader.
In fact, thinking back to my Jolt of a few days ago, about how political leaders seek to have heroic narratives… perhaps Obama would be even more pleased with himself with “wilderness years.” In fact, if Obama really is a messiah-like figure in the minds of his biggest fans… doesn’t he need to return and demonstrate a political resurrection?
Even if the same-sex marriage endorsement gets him points in 2016, the American people will be living under the bad parts of Obamacare by then. And his name is fully attached to that and the Dems will not be able to get people to believe Romney ‘did it’ to them. He will own it - and it will be his legacy.
I think so much of Obama’s rise to the White House rode on the novelty of him being black. Given this, I don’t think he stands a chance of ever being re-elected if he loses this one.
I don’t think so. Most Democrats seem to begrudgingly support him this time around ... but I don’t get the feeling they’re all that enthusiastic about it.
If he loses, he won’t be nominated come 2016. If no one else, Hillary will trounce him.
SnakeDoc
Him and Jimmah can go pound nails together....preferably into each other..........
That’s laughable. IF he ends up winning, than Americans are more stupid than ever and/or he’s really got a handle on fraud. And that is the ONLY way I see him winning now, is by fraud, theft and complete thuggery.
Somehow I think a good majority of Americans have woken up and see what he is, if not the Democrats, and what they are leading us to.
So if he loses now, the idea of him running again in 2016 is a joke.
Oh, I thought this was going to be about term limits are only for White presidents.
I don’t think the Dems would fight to give Obama a third term as it means that Republicans would also get a chance at a third term.
But, he wouldn’t be the first president that hoofed it back to the Senate after leaving the presidency.
Mitt bad - he's actually elected and runs things for four years without much, if any, vision. Another Bush-type "In-Box" POTUS. What happens in 2016? Even if he's re-elected in 2016, unless something changes regarding Mitt Romney, 2020 would also be a concern.
LOL!
You’ll see Obama in 2016 if he loses in 2012 and Romney has not put America back to work.
I truly believe he'll be another ex pres like Carter that's not about to go away.
If the republicans grew, borrowed, stole, rented or cloned a “set”, Obama would be forced to run his 2016 campaign from a prison cell.
Yes, I am a dreamer and have a wild imagination.
Obama will qualify as Secy General of the UN. After all..he is from a corrupt third world country and has communist background.
This is not the first time I have considered the possibility that Obama may pull a Grover Cleveland on us.
I have a different opinion from the author. I don’t think he’d accept defeat should Romney win the election, and I don’t think either of the other branches of government would do anything about it. Hell, I don’t think the Secret Service, Marshals, a Sheriff, or the FBI would do anything about it either.
The only “constitution” Obama believes in has red covers both front and back.
I don’t know if dear leader will win (granted, three months ago, I didn’t think the Supreme court would rule such a blatantly anti-individual rights bill constitutional), but I think a very large outbreak of violence, plus a run through the Supreme court is guaranteed. I would be extremely surprised if dear leader didn’t at least make a symbolic gesture of challenging his defeat on racial grounds.
This is one of those things I will happily worry about AFTER Romney drives the Marxist Homo-in-Chief from the White Hut.
When Obama is removed from office he will go into a very deep depression that will lead to hard drug use. In a few years I wouldn’t be at all suprized to hear he was found in an alley dead of an overdose.
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