Which Potential Independent Candidate Could Take Support Away From Obama?

[izixs]

So first toss out the incredible threats (Nader running again for what reason?, Kucinich? Hah!, McKinney who?, who's that person running on the world unity ticket then?), and keep with potential threats. These would be candidate who don't sound crazy, profess left leaning views of some sort (or in some cases centrist views), and would be competent at running a national campaign on short notice.

There are a number of individuals that meet the first criteria. Sanders yes, Feingold yes, heck, a large fraction of the current senate, yes. Pretty much none of these folks would be making the plunge at this late stage due to the 3rd factor, plus being seen as traitors to the party (yes, even Sanders) and quickly smeared as a traitor for such. Lieberman might not care, but his appeal would be similar to a Bloomberg, cutting deeper into Republican numbers than Democrat numbers. (For those playing at home Lieberman is not well liked on the left and moderates are kind of sick of him to at this point.)

So Senate land (or former Senate land) is probably not the best place to start when looking for such an unlikely possibility. Next stop is the governors. A governorship is a cushy job in the purely political sense. You get to act tough, pretend to be a mini-president, and don't have to do as much strategic voting like a senator. The downside is for this hypothetical is that outside your own state you might not be well known (also a problem for senators), but also will be seen as not having a firm grasp of national issues (which senators pretend to have). What more, for a Democratic governor to jump up they'll similarly face the tar and feathering of being labeled a traitor. But unlike the senators, they have an advantage, and a possible advantage. The first is on the traitor side of things, they can claim their own executive experience shows them that Obama has done x, y, and z horribly wrong and thus the Democrats need an alternative. The possible advantage is geography. A governor is much less likely than a senator to have gone 'washington' for obvious reasons, and thus might be able to launch a national campaign out of their home state, perhaps even locking it down in their favor early. Having a start in the electoral college will make them seen as a legitimate candidate for the presidency. But if the state is too small (Vermont for instance), then even a lock of your home state won't be seen as enough.

So, which governors are popular in their home state to potentially upset the president there, come from large-ish states or swing state (aka, somewhere important), who could possibly build a national campaign, and meet the other criteria? The three names I come up with are Cuomo (big state, well connected, popular), Brown (biggest state, well known nationally, fairly popular), Hickenlooper (medium state, popular, important swing state), and Nixon (medium state, popular, important swing state). Of that list, Brown is probably the only one crazy enough to want to try.

If no governor were to try, there is always the final set of options that is everything else. A house person wouldn't be seen as credible, very few former generals could even imagine to pull off building a campaign infrastructure out of nothing as they lack name recognition to get started, and so that pretty much leaves random celebrities. Michael Moore doesn't meet the Kucinich level for appealing to voters. So that requires less activist options. So my guess would be George Clooney. He's well liked, pretty, and well spoken. Other than that, I got nothing.

So in short, such an indie candidacy of any threat to the president would have to either come out of no where, be incredibly lucky for some reason, or require someone established to throw away any hope of being taken seriously in the party again. Aka, its highly unlikely.