It has come to this: the Hillary moment for 2012

Secretary Clinton attends the 2011 APEC Forum. Photo shows Clinton at the CEO Summit in Honolulu, Hawaii on Nov. 11. State Dept Image/Scott Chernis.

 

 

Would anyone at the Mile High Stadium in Denver in ’08, where the Democratic Party nominated Barack Obama against a backdrop of Greek pillars, have dreamed that 2012 might be Hillary’s moment?

The recommendation by Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen in the Wall Street Journal that Democrats replace Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton on the ticket in 2012 is startling in its bluntness:

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion. 

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 

Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy. 

Note: recall that Democratic leaders dissed Hillary in 08 for being “too polarizing.”

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“The name “Hillary Clinton” crosses lips

Obama is increasingly portrayed as a weak leader, and the bleak economic news is not brightening his outlook for 2012.  In his bi-weekly column, John Hughes, former editor of the Christian Science Monitor, reminds us:

He campaigned on a platform to change Washington, but as he himself admitted in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the atmosphere there is worse since he became president.

Hughes goes on to note: There is already some whispering. The name “Hillary Clinton” crosses lips.

Further, Hughes boldly goes where to my knowledge no mainstream pundit has ever previously gone to report the actual results of the Democratic primary in 2008:

In the curious way we elect our presidents – so bemusing to many foreigners – Hillary Rodham Clinton got more of the people’s vote than Obama in the primaries: 18,223,120 to his 18,011,877. Neither candidate received enough delegates from state primary races and caucuses to reach a majority at the party convention, but “superdelegate” votes pushed Obama over the top.

Remember the superdelegates? Those were the Democratic party leaders who with practically one voice declared in ’08 that racism was taboo, but the sexist trashing of Hillary Clinton by both left and right-wing extremists was acceptable. Don’t take my word for it, watch then DNC Chair Howard Dean apologize on CSPAN for the sexism after it was too late to make a difference.