Expect the talk of a primary challenge to Obama only to get
louder. Pundits salivate at the prospect of an unusual twist,
turning the foregone conclusion of Obama’s nomination into a story.
The problem is: A challenge won’t happen.
Special elections are always overlooked before, and then
over-analyzed after. However, even with those caveats, three recent
ones were big — and bad — news for Democrats.
Democrats had every right to expect winning at least two
of the three — two Congressional races and the West Virginia
gubernatorial — and possibly winning them all. Instead they lost
two and came dangerously close to losing all three.
In NV-2 looked competitive on paper — they had a good
candidate and a good track record of late in the state. In NY-09,
they had a 3-1 party enrollment advantage. But in the end, they
lost the first 36% to 58% and they lost the second 46% to
54%.
Only in Democrat-dominated West Virginia did they win, but
just barely. The Republican fell less than 8,000 votes short of
winning and held the Democrat to less than 50% of the
vote.
The reason these races are of such interest is because the
biggest name in them, wasn’t on the ballot. And such results, in
places Democrats should have done better this year, only raise
questions about next year when Obama’s name will be on the ballot.
Or if it might not be.
It didn’t take these races to start the talk that Obama
could be “primaried.” A late August CNN/ORC International poll
(released 8/29) started the rumor ripple by reporting that 27% of
Democrats had responded the party should nominate someone other
than Obama.
Even a liberal press can’t resist a story, especially one
where none existed before. Suddenly having a contested nomination
on the Democratic side is irresistible fodder.
The problem around such speculation is that there is
virtually no chance it happens. To understand why, look back at the
last time a serious primary challenge to an incumbent president
occurred.
In 1980, Kennedy challenged Carter. Carter won the
nomination, but lost in a landslide to Reagan. In many Democratic
circles, the damage had already been done to Carter and as a
result, damage was done to Kennedy as well.
That challenge illustrates many lessons.
First, primary challengers to incumbent presidents don’t
win. That’s why primary challenges rarely happen. Not only didn’t
Kennedy win in 1980, McCarthy didn’t in 1968, and Roosevelt didn’t
in 1912. Admittedly, Reagan came close against Ford in 1976, but
even Reagan didn’t disprove the rule.
The reason is that the two major parties have too much
invested in an incumbent president. Incumbents rarely lose — only
Bush, Carter, Ford, Hoover, and Taft in the last century. To have
such an advantage in a run for the nation’s highest office is hard
to concede.
And the last people to concede it and renounce their
party’s president are the party faithful who vote in the primaries.
However, such is not the case with the electorate at large. So
those incumbents who are challenged seriously, often don’t win in
November — Taft in 1912, Ford in 1976, and Carter in
1980.
Inevitably the blame for such defeats is often given to
the primary challenger. They are seen as having weakened the
incumbent — providing lines of attack to the other party,
diverting scarce party contributions, and splitting the party when
it needed unity more than ever.
For that reason, the challenger often loses more than just
the race, he hurts his own political future. Roosevelt never
regained the Republican throne, despite overwhelming earlier
popularity. Kennedy spent years in the Senate rebuilding his
reputation as an able legislator.
Again, Reagan is the only exception — gaining the
nomination just four years later — but Watergate was the reason:
Republicans had never nominated Ford, let alone elected him, to the
vice presidency or the presidency.
Few are willing to embody the adage: He who wields the
sword, seldom wears the crown. That limits greatly the field of
credible challengers in the first place.
Finally, from what angle would an Obama challenger run? It
is inconceivable that it would be from the right — there is no
national conservative base left in the Democratic Party. From the
left? With the Tea Party’s rise, liberals have to know that Obama
is their only hope in this election.
Finally, the Kennedy challenge is particularly instructive
in another way. Its wounds were not just inflicted on the
candidates or the party elite, but the party itself. The challenge
by a Northeast liberal to a Southern conservative was something
many southerners never forgot.
Kennedy’s challenge to Carter is hardly the only reason
Democrats have seen a continual erosion in the South, but it didn’t
help stem it either.
Party establishments don’t quickly forget such things, any
more than they quickly forgive them. It is something any party —
particularly today’s Democrats, who took a beating in 2010 — will
do everything they can to avoid.
