Neither of these guys have any influence in the Democratic party anymore, and Obama is too arrogant to pay any attention to them anyway.
Still, it's not every day that you see two former presidential pollsters calling for the leader of their party to step aside.
Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen write in the Wall Street Journal:
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.
Certainly, Mr. Obama could still win re-election in 2012. Even with his all-time low job approval ratings (and even worse ratings on handling the economy) the president could eke out a victory in November. But the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern-not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.
Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance. With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years ago. He-like everyone else-knows that they are worse off.
I'm not sure Hillary is the answer either. The Democratic Party brand has been damaged by Obama, and Clinton served as his Secretary of State. It will be hard to separate the two during a campaign that promises to redefine the term "negative" for both sides.
Thomas Lifson adds:
Like Rick, I see almost no chance that Obama would take himself out of the race -- unless, of course, things turn out very badly and it looks even to him as though he could not win. Hillary would solve a lot of problems of with a disastrous incumbency. I believe that Schoen Caddell genuinely are concerned for the future of their party, seeing it in the hands of the leftist faction that will hand power to the GOP for a generation. There are others in the Democratic Party, especially in legislative offices, who would fear a wipeout wave election in 2012, if Obama's popularity heads further south. So, it is indeed possible that pressure could be brought to bear on Obama next year.
Would Hillary even want the office? In the past, I would have scoffed at the question, for she obviously craved power. I remember the 1994 election in which she briefly spoke of a co-presidency and offered the slogan, "Buy one, get one free." Following widespread criticism and mockery, she kept her mouth shut about it, and simply took HillaryCare as her mission, only to suffer a stinging rejection.
She looks and talks awfully worn out, an understandable result of nearly constant intercontinental travel, and nonstop responsibility for a bureaucracy spread out across the globe's time zones.
Still, if the party looks doomed, I can't rule out a Hillary run. Because she'd win.
Andrew Malcolm has further worthy thoughts on what he calls the "Dump Obama" movement.
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