It seems to me a strange thing, mystifying, that the Democratic Party’s incumbent president, who has extended & expanded every odious bush administration policy, has betrayed every liberal principle, has broken every campaign promise, is in brazen contempt of the Constitution and several Federal laws, and has now unilaterally offered to cut Social Security, will be running unopposed in the 2012 primary.
Yes, he entered office inexperienced, but that’s because the king-makers ignored the will of the majority of voters in 2012 to pick a neophyte and incorrigible loafer, a con man selling rainbows and unicorns.
Yes, he’s faced tough opposition from Republicans. But hey, they are the “opposition” party after all. And he has only himself to blame for stinking up the joint so bad in his first two years that it cost the Dems the House in the mid-terms.
Even if his administration had in any way resembled a Democratic one, your incumbent is embarrassingly down in the polls vs. a generic GOP candidate, has sunk to 39% in pivotal Florida, and has shown no wherewithal to to turn thing around in the next 18 months. The fat lady is already clearing her throat.
Change Horses Before You Get Bucked Off
Surely, many Democrats, while gravely disappointed in their hopeless-changeless incumbent, are still fearful of ‘changing horses midstream’ or weakening party unity with a primary fight. But it’s a wives’ tale that strong primary challenges weaken the incumbent. The reverse is true: weak incumbents attract strong primary challenges. In barry, the Dems easily have the weakest incumbent in American history. Nobody — I mean nobody — likes him! Not to mention that he’s not really a Democrat, rather a moderate Republican / corporatist whore.
Cowardly Lions
So where are the all the vultures? The usual suspects have all declared themselves not interested. Dennis Kucinich, that quadrennial protest candidate, is confining his protests to the sidelines this time. Hillary swears she’s done with politics. Feingold insists he’s not interested. Every other potential challenger is laying low, protecting their careers’ futures.
Honestly, it’s not hard to see why. Barry and his droogs fight dirty and nasty. The first challenger to toss their hat into the ring would be skewered, roasted, drawn and quartered before that hat hit the ground. It would be ugly. Medieval.
Just look at how barry won his four election battles:
- Midnight procedural challenge disqualifying all of his primary opponents;
- Leaked opponent’s unsavory divorce records;
- Leaked opponent’s unsavory divorce records;
- Massive voter fraud & rigging of caucuses, vicious personal attacks driven in to the hilt, race card played to the max; rigged convention.
The barry political-crime machine is masterful at raising huge sums of cash from the corporate tyrants he serves. (Not to mention airhead bimbos like George Clooney and Tom Hanks.) While doubts exist his 2012 campaign can match the ocean of money raised in 2008, barry is already way ahead of any potential primary opponents, who’ve raised exactly zero to date.
Since no one Democrat is brave enough to take on barry and his Chicago boys, is there no way to stop the obama juggernaut?
The A.B.O. Slate
There is a way. It’s a bit tricky, but is surely worth trying.
Most people aren’t aware that, when you vote for a candidate in a primary, you’re really voting for a slate of delegates pledged to vote for that candidate at the convention. “Undeclared” delegates are occasionally chosen, seen most recently in Michigan in 2008. (though barry ended up stealing all of those, as well as a few of Clinton’s Michigan delegates for good measure.)
Just writing-in “none of the above” won’t count without a pre-designated slate to receive that vote. The same goes for writing in a specific person’s name — if no slate of delegates exists pledged to that person, those write-in votes get tallied … then tossed.
What’s required is to run an A.B.O. — Anyone But Obama — slate in each state, delegates pledged to vote at the Democratic national convention for any candidate they like, so long as it’s not obama.
It really doesn’t matter who they nominate, or even whether the ABO slates from the several states chose the same person. With enough ABO delegates in Charlotte, barry coudn’t receive an outright majority on the first ballot, opening up a floor fight of epic proportions and a brokered convention. At that point, the cowardly lions might find the nerve to enter the fray and attempt to seize the nomination. barry’s one billion dollars would be useless. And if his droogs attempted to rig the convention like they did in 2008, our ABO delegates would simply burn down the convention hall march out and hold the vote in a bar across the street.
Who would prevail in this scenario? Who knows. Who cares, so long as it is Anyone But Obama.
Getting to Charlotte
Steve Martin once told a joke: “How to earn a million dollars and not pay any taxes: 1. Earn a million dollars; 2. Don’t pay any taxes.”
Like Martin’s scheme, the devil is in the details of our ABO plan. For many of us, it’ll require re-joining a discredited party we left in disgust. However emotionally or ethically unsettling, it’s physically easy.
Far more tricky is getting to Charlotte. A trip to the national convention is a plum reserved for long-time party loyalists and hacks of individual candidates. The entire party machinery is in the hands of the obot apparatchiks. In theory, however, the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and any registered Democrat is eligible to serve as an “undeclared” delegate. And you, dear reader, are going to be that delegate.
The rules for selecting delegates vary from state to state — in the ones that assign delegates only after the primary, our ABO strategy may need to be modified. Caucus rules are particularly convoluted.
Here’ what you do. Tomorrow, call or visit your local democratic HQ and tell them you’d like to become a delegate, and ask how that works. They’ll give you the run-around. Be persistent. Try not to mention that you oppose obama for as long as possible. Ask if it’s possible to be an “undeclared” delegate. Take down the name of the person you speak to. If they give you information you later find out is false, report them, as they’ve just committed elections fraud. Report back here in the comments section with what you’ve discovered.
The ABO slate might not succeed, but in trying, we can at least can send a wake-up call to the saner elements of the Democratic Party. Please — pick Anyone But Obama!
(c) 2011 by True Liberal Nexus. All rights reserved.
True Liberal Nexus 
So I’m in. Do we write “ABO” in on ballots?
No. If this works, there will be an “undeclared”/ “ABO” slate printed on the ballot.
Frankly, a primary (or third party) challenge is not the answer. Obama will still win the nomination. The only difference is that the Republican-Lite and DLC types will be handed a convenient scapegoat (those damned unrealistic liberals) for his eventual loss in the general election. The Republican-Lites who coopted the Democratic Party into the service of Wall Street and the US Chamber of Commerce the 80s and more recently the China Lobby do not need a convenient scapegoat for Obama’s upcoming loss. Kennedy gave them one for Southern Conservative Dem Jimmy Carter’s loss in 1980. Perot gave them an excuse for Clinton’s plurality win and weakened first term, and Nader gave them an excuse for Gore’s loss.
If the Democratic Party is ever to reclaim its New Deal and Great Society legacy–its soul–the Clinton and Obama factions need to be thoroughly repudiated, defeated and destroyed with no convenient excuses or scapegoats. If the Democratic Party is ever to once again fight for those outside of the top two or three percent in the country it must first be destroyed so that a true liberal/progressive party might rise from its ashes. Obama being sent home a disgraced one-term loser is the first–albeit painful–step in this process.
I tend to be a “fight-em every step” kinda guy. I’m chary of letting things hit rock bottom, just so the Dems/America will ‘learn it’s lesson.’ First, it’s a long way to the bottom, and they’re taking us all down with them. It’ll hurt bad when we land. I don’t think we can survive 4 years of republican rule, especially not under Bachmann or Perry.
Second, there is no guarantee the Dems will learn a single goddamn thing. The progs learned nothing from Nader in 2000. The dems learned nothing from Kerry in 2004.
Third, I see the ABO initiative as a way to redeem liberalism’s reputation, by showing we oppose this monster. Even if barry loses the general, his machine will still be in control of the Party.
Finally, give them an excuse – so what? What tangible use is that to them?
Except Tamerlane, they did learn a lesson. It was to bully anyone who voted third party by convincing them they voted for a republican. That’s why the people I know who voted for nader in 2000, were emphatic about voting for Barry.
The Nader-obi voters I know mostly are dreamy idealists with their heads in the clouds. A few have since wizened up.
UPDATE:
* A prog organization, Health Care Not Warfare, has begun efforts to elect uncommitted delegates at the Iowa caucuses. It seems, however, that they only desire to “influence” barry, but will still vote to nominate him. ABO can do better! (Iowa delegate rules here:
Click to access delegateplan.pdf
* The Florida Dem party plans to hold caucuses in June if the state schedules its primary in February. This would help the ABO movement;
* DNC delegate rules here:
Click to access 2012_Rules_Call__Regs.pdf
* None other than David Plouffe rewrote the rules, to make it harder for anyone to oppose barry — among other things, super-delegates #s are reduced, and there will be no uncommitted SDs. The ABO stealth attack can actually benefit from these changes.
Interesting! In the 08 debacle I voted for a committed Hillary supporter. She was devastated at being unable to cast our ballot in Denver. As soon as I get back to PA I am going to check in to this!
Tamerlane, what are your thoughts about what’s going on with the NPA and the recent post at FDL?
I’m glad progs are starting to speak out and realize that barry is the problem.
I fear that the NPA will be a quixotic effort. They can’t decide whether to run someone in the dem primary, or to have nothing to do with the party they declare “dead”. They insist they’ll nominate “a real Leftie” for POTUS, who’d have no chance of winning. (5:2 odds it’s Nader again.) At this point, only a moderate can win next year, and any moderate dem -even a few Gops like Snowe – are to the left of barry. But progs always prefer to impale themselves on their ideals than actually win and make some real PROGress!
I’ll just repeat it again because I have so much respect for you.
None of this will do any good. The die, being formed since the 1980s, was cast in 2008. Obama winning over Clinton, and how he did it, sealed it because he’s the leader of this horrendous pack who are voting age and in control of the narrative. They’re on Wall St, in the media, in politics, and they’re average Andys peering into their idiotic Blackberrys, mesmerized by pretty propaganda and refusing to look up at what’s happening around them. People are living in their imaginations while dismissing the truth and attacking truth tellers. There’s no way to win against them unless we literally, physically, take over and we won’t do that because we’re too fat and comfy reading our computer screen and prefer to let our fingers do the marching over our keyboards where, in practical terms, we’re powerless.
The vast number of people who will vote for Obama has nothing what so ever to do with policies or legislation or any issue other than seduction, narcissism, opportunism, and ultimately sociopathy.
Even if you don’t live in a major metropolitan area and haven’t noticed the decline over the past decade, turn on TV. It’s apparent on every cable news show. It’s reality TV. It’s written into scripted shows. It’s even in shows on channels like Discovery and National Geographic, wildlife shows with more footage of a khaki preening yahoo-screaming narcissist and his crew hunting for polar bears to video than of polar bears themselves. One show after another. And the commercials too. We are a nation of essentially ignorant schmucks who fancy themselves brilliant fascinating beautiful celebrities, a nation of high schoolers far more interested in Wendy Deng smacking a pie-thrower than in her husband’s and step-son-in-law’s shameless lying to Parliament about outrageous abuse of power that included unconscionable hurt to individuals.
In other words you’re barking up the wrong tree. The people who defend and support and will vote for Obama cannot be reached through reason. And even those who have been “disappointed” in him are returning to the fold, attacking people of principle in this relentless drive to destroy independent critical thinking.
I admire your tenacity, but we’re already off the cliff. What’s left now to deal with is how we land and what we do after that.
Let’s hear the plan for landing & dealing, Zal.
I’ll even post it if you write it up all perty-like.
“The” plan? I don’t have the plan, tam. I grew out of that delusion in 2008. The only plan I have is for my partner and myself, and even that I’m not particularly confident about but it’s the best I can come up with.
But I do know what’s happening and where it leads. And barring a major event, which dissatisfied progressives aren’t remotely capable of initiating, nobody is going to unseat Barack Obama in 2012. That I know.
Would you share your personal plan, and is it something all of us can do?
I’m not particularly inclined to give attackers more personal ammunition to hurl at me.
My bottom line is we’re headed straight into a perfect storm so devastating it’ll be apocalyptic to our society and possibly our civilization; if it hasn’t taken hold by the end of 2012 at the least it’ll be impossible to avoid by then. Even though our course is still reversible right now, the pieces are in place and because people like me who see it coming are being attacked, not believed, and therefore The People won’t literally storm the palace (which is the only way to stop this), it’s as good as irreversible.
With the election of Obama and full empowerment of the sociopathic population that’s been growing like a plague since the 1980s, life as we have known it is sinking like the Titanic while well intentioned people like you suggest we rearrange the deck chairs.
Obama becoming Democratic President, and other “likable” sociopaths gaining positions of power in politics, Wall St and “liberal” mainstream media (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, TIME, etc) in recent years, was the final alignment needed to make this happen. Neocons couldn’t do it alone, they needed what Obama et al delivered.
It’s not going to happen, it is in the process of happening. (Simplest, though by no means worst, visual proof: a few short years ago neocon Bush tried to monkey with Social Security and had to retreat with his tail between his legs; Obama’s doing it and Democrats will call the chipping away of the Democratic crown jewel a victory.) Suggesting third party candidates, especially since there is none with the necessary seductive power, at this point is bailing hand buckets of water out of the Titanic. The Republican and Democratic Party are in absolute power and they’re in cahoots. I give you props for wanting to change what’s happening, but as far as I’m concerned the ship’s a lost cause and there are more vital ways to spend my energy for myself and those I love.
And BTW, those complicit (wittingly or not) in this perfect storm include some posters on these blogs that are critical of Obama. They attack posters like me and get away with it long enough to draw others into their attacks, and they run us off because nobody has our backs and truth telling empaths can never win against conniving sociopaths.
Cenk Uygur explains why he’s leaving MSNBC:
Everybody on every show and every mainstream magazine and newspaper, and online sources like Jane Hamsher, is bought and paid for, and, wittingly or not, they’re framing the narrative in the way that benefits their own opportunism. Including the “good” ones, those seen as truth tellers like Rachel Maddow. They couldn’t keep their jobs or access otherwise. And the impact that has on what Americans believe is staggering.