"This Democrat thinks he can win in 2016 as the anti-Obama" on the MSNBC website by Benjy Sarlin says:
The former governor is gambling that Democrats won’t just want an alternative to Clinton in 2016–they’ll want a complete and total rejection of the Obama presidency.
(See
article on MSNBC, no video.)
I don't think Democrats want a rejection of Obama's work. But we sure do need something better than more of the same.
Sarlin goes on to say Schweitzer slammed "Obama’s record on civil liberties (the NSA revelations were 'un-effing-believable'), his competency ('They just haven’t been very good at running things'), and above all, Obamacare ('It will collapse on its own weight')." I can't fault him there. And I certainly don't want the Republican alternative, whatever that will be. Imagine a Republican President in charge of the NSA. (Mitt Romney said in his campaign that there were two kinds of law, the normal law and the law of war, and if the administration thought you fell into the second category then constitutional guarantees didn't apply.)
So, I would like to find someone who will run as a real Democrat, and then govern as a real Democrat. My suspicion is that Schweitzer, however, would not be sufficiently popular with progressives.
My question for the day is: do you think Schweitzer should run?