Resurrecting the Democrat Calculus: How Much Pain Will the Party Take for Obama?

As readers know, I predicted a Lightworker re-election loss and was proven wrong.  (I along with Michael Barone and many other respected political prognosticators.)  In pondering this though, I think I was correct directionally but wrong electorally.  I claimed Obama was essentially a spent force, his initial intoxicating effect now irreparably diluted and anemic throughout the nation.

And I think this is true in terms of leadership, it just wasn't true electorally.  The Lightworker touched enough low information voters and Mitt Romney didn't inspire much enthusiasm, thus four more years of Obama.  But, it's four more years of Obama in office, not necessarily four more years of traveling Obama's path for America.  Yes, we will continue to give the Islamist threat short shrift and continue to be unprepared (or just lie about it);  yes, we will spend more and more taxpayers dollars on utopian bullshit, and yes we will have a feckless foreign policy that sacrifices our ideals and friends at the expense of courting rogues and liberal totems.  BUT, we will not feel the inexorable pull to the transformed America of Obama's inner vision (I say inner because nothing about where he wants to take us is ever revealed to the public).  I claimed Obama was done and wouldn't be President.  He is President but that doesn't mean he isn't done.  So, I'm salvaging a bit of analytical victory in this whole affair.

Indeed many in the press are (perhaps prematurely) entertaining the possibility of Obama 2.0 as one very long lame duck period, and the recent tsunami of scandals (real scandals that the press will be hardpressed to ignore unlike the myriad petty scandals which have been coming fast and furious (see what I did there?) since the day Dear Leader took office) is just the latest.  The press was coming around to this view after Obama's failure on the sequester and gun control.  But the key analytical framework for evaluating Obama's prospects for a successful second term is how the party leadership reacts.  I outlined the calculus that the Dem poobahs must be contemplating during Obama 1.0.

So in looking at the entire string of events from Virginia, New Jersey, and Scott Brown to what is shaping up to be a very bad Nov 2nd, what will Dem party poobahs conclude? Will they conclude that Obama is damaging to the party? Maybe, maybe not, but it is hard to draw any other conclusion. And what if they conclude he is? How will this affect the spending of resources and ability to attract competent individuals to the administration? As I state here, it will be difficult, making a turnaround very unlikely. This will be gut-wrenching for Dems, they are likely facing an intra-party debate on the fundamental question of whether to go all in for Obama and resurrect his presidency or pull the plug entirely on Hopeandchange and, as they so famously put it, "move on."

The calculus is still the same, and in fact, much more pressing as the emergent wave of scandals will resurrect the conversation in the smoke-filled rooms again and party poobahs will be assessing how much Obama is ruining the Democrat brand morphing it from champion of the downtrodden to thuggish would-be tyrants.  The answer will be critical to whether Obama 2.0 becomes the Guinness Book of Records Longest Lame Duck Presidency or something closer to what fanboy Obamabot nation had hoped for.

UPDATE:  Way back in 2009 I posited the theory that the stock market would rise on Obama's stumbles and sustain an upward trajectory as Obama's political power waned (see here and here).  So I present without comment this chart of the S&P 500 Index.  OK, here is the comment: note the pronounced slump right around early November and the sharp recovery that has gained momentum as Obama's 2.0 troubles have mounted.