Politico started the shit today by posting that they had indication that Howard Dean will primary Obama in 2012. Yes, Politico's Roger Simon wrote an article with the title "Could Dean beat Obama?" implying that Howard Dean might challenge President Barack Obama for the 2012 presidential Election. Wall Stree Journal's John Fund also ran the same story.
Then on Morning Joe this morning, another politico reporter said that Russ Feingold was also thinking of running against Obama in 2012 because of tuesday after losing his senate race, he said that he was focusing on 2012 and the "next battle".
Well according the Dean camp and Feingold camp those speculations are invention of republicans. Howard Dean's spokesperson, Karen Finney, pushed back those speculations :
It's absolutely not true. He supports President Obama in 2012 and he has repeatedly said so publicly.
Howard Dean is right now in a business trip in Canada.
According to Huffington Post, the Howard Dean Camp is growing suspicious. In fact, Karen Finney thinks that the Right is behind rumors about Dean challenging Obama in 2012. She said :
I do think that there's some chatter on the right about that as a way to sort of weaken the president (...)
The left is definitely frustrated, no doubt. Health care, they were disappointed about. Don't Ask Don't Tell, there were other issues. The White House is going to have to deal with that. I don't think that means he gets a presidential challenge, though.
Kombiz Lavasany, who worked at the DNC during the Dean years, called it "Non-Sense":
The notion that Governor Dean or Senator Feingold are going to mount a primary challenge to President Obama is nonsense(...)
It was a notion dreamed up by two right-wing columnists (John Fund and Bill Kristol) and regurgitated by Roger Simon at Politico for mainstream consumption. It's really just the latest reminder that if Kristol and Fund are giving you the inside scoop about politics, especially Democratic politics you're wasting your time listening to them
On wednesday, Russ Feingold, via his spokesperson, clarified his statement and denied having the project to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.
"While a lot of other Democrats ran away from their support for the Recovery Act and health insurance reform, Russ Feingold didn't, he stood by those votes and President Obama's effort to do the right thing," said spokesman John Kraus in an email. "I would chalk up any Beltway chatter about Russ running against President Obama as simply Washington getting wee-wee'd up on the first day of new election cycle that is two years away."
Salon.com has a great piece about that story.