With the increasing, surely short-lived chatter about a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, it is worthwhile to consider the idea’s merits (not that there’s anything wrong with that). For example, Michael Lerner’s piece in the Washington Post on Saturday, “Save Obama’s presidency by challenging him on the left,” excerpting the particularly pertinent moonbattery (emphases added):
But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unequivocally commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support — as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success — this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate. Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he’s a goner anyway.
The basic platform for such a candidate is clear: . . . Domestically, call for . . . a strong tax on carbon emissions. . . . This candidate should push for . . . corporations to prove every five years to a jury of ordinary citizens that they have a satisfactory history of environmental responsibility (much like the Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment, or ESRA, advocated by the Network of Spiritual Progressives).
“Likely,” indeed! Because, surely, that’s what the disaffected voters who provided Obama’s margin of victory thought he really meant by all of that Hope, Change, post-partisan business, right?