Will Obama face a Democratic primary challenge?

President Obama’s approval ratings are plummeting as the summer of discontent draws to a close. The most recent polls show the president’s approval ratings at or near historic lows. Gallup showed the president with a 38 percent approval rating at the end of August, while a Rasmussen poll from early September showed that only 19 percent of voters strongly approve of President Obama’s job performance and that 40 percent strongly disapprove. A Gallup poll taken in early August showed Obama’s approval in Georgia at 48 percent.

Recent economic reports offer evidence that the president’s approval rating will not rebound in the near future. In August, the U.S. economy lost exactly as many jobs as it created for a net change of zero in the unemployment rate. Home prices are slightly higher than July, but down substantially from 2010. U.S. GDP growth was approximately one percent in the second quarter. Government estimates for both the first and second quarters were later revised down. Taken together with other economic vital signs, this means that it is likely that the economy is falling into a second recession in spite of everything that President Obama has tried.

As far back as February, Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich called for Democrats to mount a primary challenge against President Obama. Now with Obama’s policies failing and his approval rating dropping, it seems that the field is open for other progressives to challenge the president’s re-election. However, with less than six months to go until the first primaries of the 2012 election season, time is running out for Democratic challengers to enter the race. The Georgia primary is tentatively set for March 6.

In the wake of the catastrophic Democratic losses of 2010, few Democrats seem eager to challenge President Obama for the right to face the Republican challenger. With the economy continuing to falter and many of Obama’s legislative victories, such as Obamacare, still deeply unpopular with voters, the election will likely be an uphill battle for Democrats.

Historically, primary challenges to incumbent presidents are also an uphill battle. The election of 1896 is that last time that a sitting president who wanted to run again was refused the nomination by his party. In that year, President Grover Cleveland lost the Democratic nomination to William Jennings Bryan. Arthur Sewall was nominated for vice president. Bryan also received the nomination of the Populist Party, although with a different vice presidential candidate. Thomas E. Watson of Thomson, Ga., who later served as a Georgia senator, became the Populist candidate for vice president. Bryan, Sewall and Watson lost to the Republican candidates, William McKinley and Garrett Hobart.

An additional problem in challenging Barack Obama is that any Democrat who ran against the president would be open to charges of racism. Many of President Obama’s supporters have leveled this charge at conservatives and Tea Party members who have criticized the president’s policies and would be likely to use the same tactic against a fellow Democrat.

Being labeled as a racist would make it almost impossible to win the Democratic nomination. A 2009 Gallup poll showed that 19 percent of Democrats were black. Another 11 percent were Hispanic. Charges of racism would seriously inhibit a candidate’s ability to win the votes of this third of the Democratic Party.

Further, President Obama continues to enjoy strong support from black voters. Exit polling from 2008 by Politico showed that 96 percent of blacks voted for Obama. A more recent Gallup poll shows that although the president’s support among blacks has declined slightly, 83 percent still approve of him and would presumably vote for him. This is compared to 40 percent approval from the nation at large and 75 percent approval from all Democrats. Because black voters make up a significant portion of the Democratic Party and have an above-average approval for the president, it becomes even more difficult for a challenger, who may not be a minority, to win the necessary votes for the nomination.

These factors together with the short time until the first primaries make it unlikely that President Obama will face a challenge from the left for the Democratic nomination in 2012. Potential Democratic candidates, sensing another Republican sweep, will choose to wait until 2016 and run either as Barack Obama’s successor or as a challenger to a Republican incumbent.

Read this article on Examiner.com:

 

http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/democratic-primary-challenge-unlikely-for-president-obama

Meet the candidates: Michele Bachmann

It is perhaps inevitable that Michele Bachmann will be compared to that other prominent conservative woman, Sarah Palin.  Both women are outspoken Midwestern brunettes and conservative Christians.  Both are also reformers and darlings of the Tea Party movement who sometimes put their feet in their mouths.  Both may ultimately end up competing for the same Tea Party votes if Sarah Palin decides to enter the 2012 presidential campaign as well.

Bachmann was born Michele Marie Amble in Waterloo, Ia. in 1956.  Her family moved to Minnesota when she was a young girl.  Her parents later divorced there.  Her mother raised her until she remarried when Michele was a teenager. 

She graduated from high school in Anoka, Mn. in 1974.  After high school, she worked on a kibbutz in Israel even though she was raised as a Lutheran.  She told TCJewfolk.com that she considers her “heritage Jewish, because it is the foundation, the roots of my faith as a Christian.”

When she returned to the U.S., she earned a B.A. from Winona State University in Minnesota.  She then continued to the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University where she earned a Juris Doctor in 1986 and the College of William and Mary where she earned an L.L.M. in tax law in 1988.  She had married Marcus Bachmann in 1978 and the couple moved to Stillwater, Mn. after her graduation from William and Mary.  Ironically, Michele met Marcus while working on Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign in 1976.

From 1988 to 1993, Bachmann worked for the IRS as a tax attorney in St. Paul, Mn.  She left the IRS to become a full-time mother to the couple’s five children and has also raised twenty-three foster children.  Her husband, Marcus, operates a Christian counseling center. 

Bachmann’s political career began in 1999 when she ran in a nonpartisan school board election in Stillwater.  She lost that campaign, but was elected to the Minnesota state senate in 2000, defeating a long-time Republican incumbent in the primary and a Democratic-Farm-Labor (DFL) candidate in the general election.  In 2002, after senate district lines were redrawn, she ran against a ten-year DFL incumbent and was re-elected.  In 2006, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives where she replaced Mark Kennedy, a Republican who left the house to run for the U.S. Senate.  In congress, Bachmann is on the Financial Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

While in the Minnesota senate, Bachmann was a strong defender of traditional marriage.  She introduced a definition of marriage amendment, but it failed to pass the DFL-controlled senate.  Minnesota has a Defense of Marriage law but it is not constitutionally defined.

While in congress, Bachmann has opposed the expansion of government power and spending while supporting free market solutions.  She opposed the financial and auto bailouts and supported President Bush’s Iraq War surge as well expanded domestic oil drilling.  She introduced the Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act in response to the Democratic ban on incandescent bulbs.  She supports the repeal of President Obama’s health care reform and the Dodd-Frank financial reform.

Bachmann has also made a number of statements that smack of conspiracy theories.  In 2009, she initially refused to complete a census form because the questions had become too personal and because ACORN was involved in helping to recruit census workers. 

Also in 2009, the Minnesota Independent reported that Bachmann feared that the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act had “provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”

Bachmann has also made a number of historical gaffes.  In one case, she confused Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire for the Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts where Minutemen “fired the shot heard round the world.”  In another incident, according to Politico she claimed that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States.”  In reality, slavery continued in the United States for almost a hundred years after the founding of the country. 

More recently, when she made her candidacy announcement in her hometown of Waterloo, Ia. Bachmann referenced John Wayne, who she said was also from Waterloo.  In reality, John Wayne was from Winterset, Ia.  The similarly named John Wayne Gacy, a serial killer, lived and worked in Waterloo before he was convicted of thirty-three murders and executed in 1994.

Bachmann was singled out by liberal pundits after the Tucson shootings in January 2010 for saying in March 2009 that she wanted people “armed and dangerous.”  Many liberals tried to paint this quote as an example of violent conservative rhetoric.  In reality, when the quote is taken in context, it is clear that Bachmann meant that voters should be armed with information. 

In spite of her weaknesses, Bachmann has a gift for fundraising.  The Atlanta Journal reports that in 2010 her campaign collected more money than any other congressional candidate.  Many of Bachmann’s contributions come in small amounts from a large network of supporters around the country.

At this point, Bachmann ranks seventh in a recent index of polls by Real Clear Politics.  She trails Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul.  She leads Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Santorum, and John Huntsman.  In a June 3 Insider Advantage/WSB-TV poll of Georgia voters, Bachmann placed second with thirteen percent.  Herman Cain placed first with twenty-six percent.

Michelle Bachmann is undoubtedly a very intelligent woman.  Her educational background is probably one of the most impressive in Congress and her experience as a tax lawyer would be beneficial in writing the tax reforms that the country desperately needs.  However, Michelle Bachmann is her own worst enemy when it comes to creating embarrassing sound bites.  If she cannot stop making outlandish statements it will be impossible to take her candidacy seriously.   In the age of Youtube, her campaign may already have been damaged beyond repair.   

http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/meet-the-candidates-michele-bachmann"> 

Meet the candidates: Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich (Gage Skidmore)

Newt Gingrich is a transplanted Georgian who was born and grew up in Pennsylvania.  Born in 1943, his birth name was Newton Leroy McPherson.  His mother and father divorced after a marriage of only a few days.  Newt’s mother remarried to a career army officer, Robert Gingrich, in 1946.  Gingrich adopted Newt and the couple had three daughters.

The family moved frequently as the senior Gingrich received new assignments.  Newt graduated from high school in Columbus, Ga. in 1961.  He graduated from Emory University with a B.A. in history in 1965.  He earned a Master’s and Ph.D. in modern European history from Tulane, graduating in 1971.  After earning his doctorate, Gingrich returned to Georgia, where he taught at West Georgia College in Carrollton from 1970 to 1978. 

Gingrich’s political career began with campaigns for congress in Georgia’s sixth district in 1974 and 1976.  He narrowly lost those races to Democrat Jack Flynt, but won in 1978 when Flynt decided not to seek re-election.  Gingrich served in the House of Representatives until 1998.  He was elected Minority Whip in 1989 to succeed Dick Cheney, who resigned to become Secretary of Defense.  In 1994, in the wake of the Republican landslide, Gingrich was elected Speaker of the House when Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Il.) did not seek re-election to congress.

Gingrich was largely responsible for the Contract with America that led to the 1994 Republican landslide.  During his tenure as speaker, Gingrich oversaw the passage of welfare reform, tax cuts (including the largest capital gains tax cut in U.S. history), and pushed for a balanced budget under President Clinton.  The budget was balanced in 1999 for the first time since 1969.  Gingrich’s reform agenda is a major reason for the economic boom of the 1990s.

Gingrich was also involved in the government shutdowns of 1995 and 1996.  In a situation similar to the one faced today, the Republicans refused to raise the debt limit when Democrats balked at budget cuts.  Ultimately, the shutdowns resulted in the deal to balance the budget, but Gingrich suffered politically from comments that made it seem that he shut down the government in response to a snub from President Clinton.  After Republicans lost the presidential election and eight house seats in 1996, Gingrich resigned from Congress. 

Since leaving Congress, he has served on the Defense Policy Board for President George W. Bush and the United States Commission on National Security/21^st Century.  He also teaches the Joint Warfighting Course to Major Generals at the Air University and is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor at the National Defense University.  In 2003, he founded the Center for Health Transformation to create free market health care reforms.  In 2007, he founded American Solutions, a conservative think-tank and action group.  Gingrich has also written a number of books on topics ranging from history to government policy to fictional alternate history.  After leaving Congress, he moved from Georgia to McLean, Va. where he currently resides.

There are several skeletons in Newt Gingrich’s closet.  In 1992, Gingrich was one of more than 450 congressmen who bounced checks written on the house bank.  The house bank covered the overdrafts, but many congressmen had thousands of dollars that were overdue for months.  Gingrich was not singled out by the Ethics Committee and was one of the Republican congressmen who decided to go public with the scandal, realizing that more Democrats would be affected than Republicans.

While he was in Congress, Gingrich also taught a course at Kennesaw State College in Kennesaw, Ga., an Atlanta suburb.  The course, titled “Renewing American Civilization,” led to an ethics charge and an investigation by the IRS.  The House Ethics Committee found no wrongdoing, but Gingrich did pay a fine for conflicting statements filed by his attorneys.  The Kennesaw State Foundation’s tax-exempt status was threatened after accepting $200,000 to televise Gingrich’s course across the country.  The foundation was exonerated after Gingrich resigned.

In 2008, Gingrich teamed up with Nancy Pelosi, another now former house speaker, to make a commercial advocating green energy to halt climate change.  In the past three years, Gingrich seems to have retreated somewhat on the issue.  A video on the New Hampshire Primary blog shows Gingrich saying “a topic large enough to change the behavior of the entire human race is a topic that is more than science and deserves public hearings with very tough minded public questions and we’ve had almost none of that on either side.”

Newt’s personal life may also be a problem for many prospective voters.  He married for the first time at nineteen to his former geometry teacher who was twenty-six at the time.  Six months after the 1980 divorce, Gingrich remarried.  Gingrich admitted to having an affair with Callista Bisek, a house staffer, during his second marriage.  He divorced for the second time in 2000 and married Bisek shortly after. 

In a 2011 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Gingrich admitted that his actions were wrong:  “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness.”

Gingrich has also run into two problems since announcing his candidacy this year.  In the first, he angered conservatives when he referred to Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan as “right-wing social engineering.”  Gingrich apologized to Ryan and tried to repair the damage, but his comments probably did not endear him to Tea Partiers or deficit hawks.

Secondly, in early June, Gingrich’s entire senior campaign staff resigned.  The resignations came in the wake of Gingrich’s two-week cruise in the Greek isles.  The staff members reportedly were concerned that Gingrich did not take the campaign seriously.  The departure of his staff will likely affect Gingrich’s ability to raise campaign funds, since many potential donors will seriously question his ability to win if he isn’t supported by his own employees.

The most recent Real Clear Politics index of polls shows Gingrich in statistical tie for fifth place with Ron Paul.  He currently trails Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Rudolf Giuliani, and fellow Georgian Herman Cain.  Most of the current polls do not reflect the public reaction to the resignation of Gingrich’s staff.  An Insider Advantage/WSB-TV poll of Georgia voters in early June showed Gingrich in third place behind Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann.

Very few doubt Newt Gingrich’s intelligence and ability to make policy, but if he is to survive the primary season he has major obstacles to overcome, not the least of which is to replace his entire staff in the middle of the campaign.  Gingrich’s missteps and gaffes make it unlikely that he will win the contest to face Barack Obama in 2012, but he would be a valuable advisor and strategist to the eventual Republican nominee.

http://www.examiner.com/elections-2012-in-atlanta/meet-the-candidates-newt-gingrich"> 

Click SUBSCRIBE to follow the Captain Kudzu.  Please COMMENT, LIKE, and SHARE across your networks!