No credible opponent will primary President Obama. It won't happen.
I have been very critical of many of the president's policies and political moves. I will continue to be. But he's the only president I have. In 2012, he will be the only alternative to a Sarah Palin or a Mitt Romney or a Tim Pawlenty or a Haley Barbour or a Mitch Daniels or a John Thune. Or a Newt Gingrich. Okay. I admit it- that last one made me laugh.
President Obama isn't a dream, he is a politician. His presidency is historic, but on the issues he's a cautious centrist. That doesn't mean he's corrupt or sold out, it means he's a fairly typical modern Democrat. Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been a better president. On some issues, she'd have done better, on some worse, and on most she'd have been largely the same. We now know that a John Edwards presidency would have been a disaster. No other candidates even had a ghost of a chance. Of the candidates that ran, we could not have done better than Barack Obama. That's the political reality.
We've seen a lot of names bandied about as potential Obama primary opponents. One of the most prominent was Howard Dean. After the past week, I'm assuming most people have given up on that idea. But Dean never indicated any interest in running, anyway, and no other prominent Democrats have, either. None will. It's not going to happen.
President Obama is our president, and if he's not still our president in 2013, we're all going to be in big trouble. There is no historical evidence that booting disappointing Democratic presidents or disappointing Democratic Congressional majorities leads to better of either. There is historical evidence from other countries that when extremist parties are appeased, in the hope that they will reveal themselves, and then be expelled from office, the damage they do while in office is disastrous. It doesn't work.
Pretending that the president is doing the best he could isn't the answer. Many of us feel he could be doing better, and will continue to push him to do better. But pretending that we will have a better alternative also isn't the answer. The only alternatives are far far worse. That's the reality. Dreams are nice, but we have to try to live in reality. Rather than rueing the loss of a dream, we need to keep working on making that reality better. For the next several years, on the national level, the best way to make that reality better will be to continue to push President Obama to do better.