In a column in the Providence Journal yesterday, John MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine, called for a primary against Obama in 2012:
So you’re disillusioned with Obama. So you watched The Who play "Won’t Get Fooled Again" during the Super Bowl. So you’re mad, and you’d like to do something about it.
Well, don’t sit around being a whiny liberal, the kind of softy Rahm Emanuel likes to insult. Don’t retreat into cynicism, either, or such pointless barroom analysis as "All politicians are alike" and "The big money runs everything."
No, do something constructive — something, moreover, that RahmObama will clearly understand. Give Obama a primary.
I count myself as one of the many who are disillusioned with Obama. I did not support him in the Dem primaries in 2008 until Edwards dropped and then only reluctantly. But my misgivings throughout 2008 were small compared with the frequent policy mis-steps that I have seen since he became President.
The list of issues I do not like are long. He has not cut the defense budget, escalated in Afghanistan, temporized on gay rights, been absolutely atrocious on civil liberties. He supported giving trillions to the banks while preventing home foreclosures got just a small amount of support.
His lack of leadership on healthcare reform allowed us to get to the mess we are in today. Had he told Max Baucus to put up or shut up about a bipartisan bill back in June instead of allowing him to play it out fruitlessly until September, we would have a bill signed into law today. Even now, he is letting the Congress take the lead on the way forward.
MacArthur's take is about the same as mine:
If you feel betrayed by Obama’s expansion of the war in Afghanistan and mercenary forces in Iraq; by seeing him kowtow to Wall Street and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein; by his plan to donate 30 million taxpayer-subsidized policies to the health-insurance business, and you wonder why Guantánamo and NAFTA are still open for business, then it’s not too early to start thinking about 2012 and who might run against the incumbent now stationed in the White House.
There are not many who would take on primarying a sitting President. MacArthur suggests Howard Dean.
So who is the best person to take on Obama? My first choice would be a rejuvenated Howard Dean, who might be the only hope left for the cause of liberal reform, at least in my lifetime. After scaring the wits out of the party’s Iraq-compromised establishment in 2004 with his anti-war and pro-small-donation crusade, Dean performed the thankless task of chairing the Democratic National Committee in some of its dark years...
Yet for all his hard work, Dean was rewarded by being passed over for the new Cabinet and was not invited to continue running the DNC...
Already detested by Emanuel (our new Dick Cheney), Dean has more recently committed the cardinal sin of party disloyalty by openly denouncing Obama’s (and Max Baucus’s and Joe Lieberman’s) attempt to transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to Wellpoint and other big insurance companies. So what’s he got to lose, except maybe an election?
It is still possible that Obama could learn that his bipartisan shtick is a total loser. It is still possible that he will begin to fight for the average person and not the banks. But if he does not, I think Dean primarying Obama in 2012 would be a great idea.