It is no secret that the vindictive Clinton’s have never reconciled losing the nomination to the “amateur” (as Bill Clinton referred to him) Barack Obama. It makes perfect sense that Bill Clinton wants Romney to win in November. If Obama wins another four years he will be as toxic as George W. Bush was in 2008 (maybe even more so) and no Democrat will stand a chance in 2016. Hillary made a huge mistake taking the position of Secretary of State (in which she has not distinguished herself) and thus tying herself in with Obama. By the way I like that the author finally points out that we have a RNC chairman Reince Priebus who unlike his predecessor Michael Steele, is up to the job.
by Thomas Lifson
Panic is setting in among the people who ran the Democratic Party prior to the miraculous arrival on the scene of Barack Hussein Obama and the perfect storm of events that propelled him into the White House.
These people, starting with Bill Clinton, the master Democratic politician of our era, can read the tea leaves, and the following factors alarm them:
1. Obama has energized his opposition. Despite throwing everything they could into the game, the turnout effort in Wisconsin was handily beaten by those Tea Party nobodies and an RNC head who is actually up to the job.
2. Obama has alienated hugely important constituencies. Labor unions, utterly essentially to the ground game in November, feel betrayed, and are starting to focus more on their own survival than the success of the Obama re-election campaign. The antiwar left feels betrayed over Gitmo, drones, rendition, domestic surveillance, and a host of other issues. They turned out in San Francisco picketing his fundraisers, and spoke of not voting. His Bain Capital attacks are verging into a repudiation of capitalism, so Wall Street and the finance sector are getting alarmed, and the essential flow of political contributions to Democrats from them is drying up.
3. The economy is a disaster, and Obama is doing all the wrong things. The administration is reduced to making implausible claims of spending moderation based on an internet post. The public is fed up with Obama’s performance, and his personal popularity is declining and will tank further as he goes increasingly negative on Romney. Swing voters are almost as negative about Obama as are Romney voters.
4. Obama is out for himself, and himself only. He has even thrown national security under the bus, allowing the leaking of critical information to the press about intelligence operations and cyber-warfare, and feigning outrage in Friday’s presser over the idea that he would do such a thing. Never mind what they say publicly; the insiders know that we are at cyber-war with Iran and China, among others, right now. Following the prosecutorial lynching of Scooter Libby, it is politically impossible to sweep this leak, which actually is causing our allies to shun information-sharing with us, under the rug. Unlike the Valerie Plame case, people have died, and intelligence operations have been seriously harmed.
5. A wave election is shaping up. Democrats could be swept out of office in Congress, and on down to statehouses, city halls, and dog pounds. With the left flank threatening to stay home, union funds and enthusiasm depleted, and Obama offering nothing but negativity, while Tea Partiers mobilize nationally as never before seen on the GOP side, the electorate will skew so far right that the GOP could end up as dominant in 2013 as the Democrats were in 2009.
It’s already leaking into the smarter corners of the media world: Obama is killing the Democratic Party. The tipping point is here.
This, not coincidence, is why several brainy Democrats, including Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, Ed Rendell, and Lanny Davis, have been providing sound bites that can be used by the Romney campaign to destroy the effectiveness of Obama’s attacks on Mitt Romney. The biggest damage has been done by Bill Clinton, whose barrage includes providing the title for the current number-one bestseller about Obama, Ed Klein’s The Amateur, calling Mitt Romney’s business track record at Bain “sterling,” and stating that the Bush tax rates should not be increased, disagreeing with Obama.
Ralph Nader thinks he knows what is going on, and told the Daily Caller‘s Nicholas Ballasy:
He’s laying down the groundwork for Hillary Clinton running for president in 2016. Everything she is doing and everything he is doing argues that they want to run Hillary Clinton for president in 2016, so while he might appear with Obama in fundraisers in New York and elsewhere, he’s basically undermining Obama.
My colleague Richard Baehr believes that Bill Clinton actively wants Obama to lose:
Bill Clinton thinks long term. Hillary will run in 2016, I am certain of it. No one loses the bug after one attempt when they came that close. I am guessing that Clinton thinks that if Obama wins this time, it will be tougher in 2016 for Hillary than if Romney wins. If Obama wins, then Hillary has to run at age 69 against a Rubio or a Ryan — somebody young and charismatic. She goes down in flames, especially if economy is still in the tank.
But if Romney wins, Clinton thinks he will have his hands full, and there is no magic bullet to turn the economy around. He is right. In fact, all the stuff that could happen January 1st with taxes going up and spending cuts could sink the economy into a big hole for another few years. If Obama loses in November, do you think he cooperates with GOP to avoid this? I don’t. If Romney wins, then Hillary runs against him in 2016, after people think GOP did not solve the problems. She wins.
All very logical. But there are only two problems with this scenario.
1. If the Clintons and their allies, like Ed Rendell and Lanny Davis, are believed by black voters to have sabotaged the re-election of the first black president, blacks will turn with fury on the Clintons. I do not imagine for a moment that Barack Obama will quietly sit back and take what he sees as abuse from the Clinton gang. If word is already out that Cory Booker is “dead to” Obama, we can be certain that the president will let his most devoted followers know if he regards the Clintons as traitors, should he lose. No Democrat can be elected president without an overwhelming share of the black vote.
2. Countless other elected Democrats in Congress and down the ticket stand to lose their offices if discouraged Democrats stay home and a wave election results. Lobbying prospects would be reduced in tandem with the loss of Democratic officeholders.
The Clinton forces are already warning the rest of the party that the Obama operation is not to be trusted. Lanny Davis called Obama’s people “vicious”:
You have vicious people who are working for the president – not the president [himself] – who are saying that Corey Booker – one of the great supporters of President Obama’s policies – is ‘dead’ because he’s giving the president good advice, disagreeing with the Kool-Aid drinking people in the campaign who think the way to win the presidency is to trash the other guy rather than to defend your own guy’s record.
[W]hy would they want to create enemies, or depict people as enemies, who are their friends?
[…]
Bill Clinton, for all his bonhomie in public, is a bitter man — first for his impeachment, and second for the humiliation he and his partner were dealt by the Obama forces in 2008. A man prone to purple rages in private, following his heart surgery, he may be taking his revenge slowly, a moderate blood pressure, as it were, smiling when walking back the latest diss.
Until Obama came along, Bill was hopeful that the novelty and wonder of history’s first husband-and-wife team of presidents would overwhelm the shame of his impeachment and lying under oath. Obama spoiled that, and made Clinton’s sobriquet “first black president” faintly ridiculous.
Whichever way the current campaign goes, with Obama defeated and the party in ruins, or with Obama off the ticket and Hillary triumphantly accepting the nomination for the good of the party and the nation, or so we will be told, Bill Clinton would prefer it to a second Obama term. And this time, he may get his way.
Read the rest – The Clinton’s war on Obama
