This is not the first time I have considered the possibility that Obama may pull a Grover Cleveland on us.
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.
Picture this: The Chairman of the Inaugural Celebration in January 2013 is none other than Senator Chuck U. Schumer (it's true). Minutes after President Romney is sworn in, Chuck U. runs to the cameras to gleefully announce "It's Romney's economy now!"
All the economic time bombs that have been carefully set in place over the last 3 years go off like little IEDs across the fruited plain. The DemocRATs, with the help of their friends in the media, pound Romney and the Republicans. The years from 2013 to 2016 are grim indeed for the GOP.
The GOP takes a bath in the 2014 mid-term elections. Pelosi once again becomes Speaker, and Reid Senate Majority Leader. The DemocRAT message leading up to the 2016 Presidential election? "WE TOLD YOU SO!"
Obama wins his second term.
Parties and politicians don't like that. It means their expected patronage time is cut in half. It means they have to start the presidential search process all over again from zero just four years down the road.
If the party is certain to lose, it's possible that they'd put up an ex-President as a sacrificial lamb, but if there's any chance of winning other politicians aren't going to defer to Obama, anymore than they deferred to Adlai Stevenson in 1960 or to Hubert Humphrey in 1972 or 1976.
It's not impossible for an ex-President to pull a Grover Cleveland, but it's harder than it was a century ago. Obama would look like Adlai Stevenson or Eugene McCarthy or Gary Hart, trying in vain to recapture his moment long after it had passed.