I voted for Obama. I have been having an increasingly acute case of buyers remorse. From looking around Daily Kos it looks like the disease is spreading rapidly. Many people seem to have the same problem that I do. It is difficult to find specific alternatives to focus on. I find myself wandering down memory lane.
There are many people here who were not even born by the period of 1966-1968. Others were too young to be involved in the political events. I on the other hand was in my mid 20s and in graduate school. LBJ was aggressively prosecuting a war in Vietnam that appeared unwinable to more and more Americans. He was dependent on backing from conservative Democrats and Republicans. There was great agitation on the Democratic left.
There were several fairly high profile opponents of the war in congress such as Fulbright, Church and Bobby Kennedy. None of them were willing to risk their political careers by openly opposing one of the shrewdest political operators to ever occupy the white house. By late 1967 the level of discontent was acute but it lacked a place to focus.
Eugene McCarthy did the country a service by offering himself as a stalking horse from the left. He was a senator with sound liberal credentials but no national recognition. His campaign became known as the children's crusade for all of the long haired college students who volunteered. The joking stopped when he got more delegates in New Hampshire than the president.
His strong showing was sufficient to convince Robert Kennedy that LBJ could be beaten. The NH primary and Kennedy's entry into the race convinced Johnson that the jig was up and he announced his retirement. I still remember that Sunday night and the cheering that could be heard on the streets. Of course RFK was assassinated and Nixon eventually won the presidency, but old tripple H the unfailing party hack who refused to repudiate the war almost beat him.
So what, if anything, does all that have to do with 2012? Clearly there is nobody with the star quality of RFK waiting in the wings at present. You can't go out and poll voters about a primary against Obama without offering potential opponents. We don't have recall elections for the US president. There are of course people mentioning some names. People will be running public and private polls using some of those names.
What is the lesson from history is that someone will have to throw down the gauntlet in order to move the proposition from the abstract. They will have to present a credible show of strength against the president in order to alter the default political course. As long as we are talking about it in the abstract nothing will come of it.