President Obama Richly Deserves to Be Dumped

[Karmadillo]

Here's an interesting call to arms by John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper's magazine. It seems late in the day for a contested Democratic nomination, but it may not be as late as we think. Just as Eugene McCarthy stepped forward to take on Lyndon Johnson, maybe there's a Democrat out there willing to step forward to take on Barrack Obama.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/14-6

President Obama Richly Deserves to Be Dumped
by John R. MacArthur

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By now it should be obvious that the system, and the Democratic Party, run Obama, not the other way around. Under this arrangement, the president carries out his duties as pre-eminent party functionary — fundraising being at the top of his list of responsibilities — and defers on legislation, leaving it to corrupt Democratic barons such as Sen. Max Baucus (D.-Mont.), devoted friend of the insurance, pharmaceutical, and banking crowd and sworn enemy of reform.

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And then there’s Afghanistan. Obama should be condemned for escalating this grotesquely expensive, destructive, and self-defeating war. Thoroughly discredited by analysts on both the left and the right, the Afghan madness seems to bore liberals who once would have marched against Vietnam. I suggest they watch the brilliant new documentary “Hell and Back Again” to enhance their knowledge of the war’s casualties. The pitiful story of Marine sergeant Nathan Harris ought to make them furious at our commander in chief; shouldn’t it also spark an intra-party revolt?

I urge people who haven’t given up on politics to examine the career of Allard Lowenstein. Lowenstein founded the Dump Johnson movement in 1967 and, against all odds, persuaded Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota to launch a Democratic primary challenge against the incumbent president over the issue of Vietnam. His example, I hope, might inspire someone to challenge another Democratic incumbent who has forfeited the trust of the people.

You may say it’s too late, that Obama is impregnable. Consider Gene McCarthy’s obscurity on Nov. 30, 1967, when he announced his insurgent crusade. At the time, many Americans confused him with Sen. Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis.), the notorious communist hunter, and in January 1968 a Gallup poll showed him winning just 12 percent of the votes in a presidential election. But on March12, McCarthy nearly beat Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. The opposition was galvanized, Robert Kennedy jumped into the race, LBJ announced he would not seek re-election, and American democracy was revived.

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