If any Democrat of standing decided to take on President Obama in the New Hampshire primary, he or she would guarantee themselves a preferred place in the 2016 field, tens of million dollars in free media exposure, an opportunity to articulate a set of goals and promises –and of course the enmity of the Chicago machine that birthed the chief executive’s political career.
If that Democrat ran in solidarity with unions across the land, blasting at the president for not going to Wisconsin and Ohio enough to stop governors Scott Walker and John Kasich, and added a specific timetable by which all American troops would be gone not just from Iraq but also Afghanistan, and if this candidate condemned and pledged to end the drone strikes and not just against American citizens but also everyone not at least indicted by U.S. courts, he or she would rally the nutroots to their flag, and union bosses would have to at least be respectful of a candidate who spoke of the need to rally to labor in the rapidly emerging era of rollback.
If that Democrat spoke to the “Occupy [Fill In The Blank]” ranks, urging them off their particular street corner and to the streets of Manchester, Nashua, and Concord, he or she could both tap into that eccentric energy, while telling mainstream center-left Americans that he or she was running to refocus everyone’s energy.
Team Obama would cajole, scream and threaten, but after passing their own version of seven stages of political grief, entreaties would be made and deals struck.
If New Hampshire produced anything like the surprise of 1968 when the obscure Sen. Eugene McCarthy took 42% of the New Hampshire Democratic votes, while President Lyndon Johnson received only 49%, Vice President Joe Biden would begin to worry at an even greater level that his time in the old Naval Observatory is limited.
Speculation and wishful thinking has focused on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but that would be a run to the president’s right, and doomed in the Democratic primaries, as almost certainly any run to his left would be. But an “Occupy the Primary” campaign, that would be fun.
The Democratic bench in the Senate and among sitting governors is pitifully weak and, for the most part, too old to be thinking 2016 thoughts. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is the heir presumptive, with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-MN, or Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer as the supporting cast in the primaries and as Veep. No elected will rock the 2012 boat on behalf of the working class.
Which leaves the private sector, which means Hollywood or the Silicon Valley, where the idle super-wealthy often tilt at windmills and run the world in their minds from poolside.
Go and see the new film The Ides of March if you want to hear a pitch perfect delivery of West Coast leftism, delivered superbly by George Clooney playing a Pennsylvania Governor running for president.
There are plenty of lefties with money and ambition in the film business, and a star turn in the towns and villages of New Hampshire might appeal to one of them, with no downside to the career if they get the script right. The Matt Damons talk a very good game, but none have asked their protesting brothers to rally to a flag –yet.
Is there a central casting candidate from among Silicon Valley’s billionaires willing to saddle up? Mr. “Please Raise My Taxes” concisely stated the politics of the left side of the tech elite, but does anyone among them have the guts and the ambition to take on a sitting president in defense of the working class and poor for whom the taxes would be raised? The filing deadline looms.
There’s a lot of room on the president’s left, but for want of a horse….
Talk Radio host Hugh Hewitt is an Examiner columnist.
